Antelope 6.0 Update 2

Antelope 6.0 Update 2 is now available. ORB-over-MQTT import and export, a reworked orb2ws, Q8 calibration support, and Qt ports of dbnoise and dberesp.

Kent Lindquist • Aug 13, 2026 • 3 min read

Antelope 6.0 Update 2 is now available, continuing the faster release cadence introduced with Antelope 6. This is a smaller update than Update 1, but it brings some genuinely useful new capabilities: ORB packets can now flow to and from MQTT brokers, Q8 dataloggers gain full calibration support, and two more classic tools move to Python/Qt.

Headline Additions

ORB-over-MQTT. The new orb2mqtt and mqtt2orb programs export and import ORB packets to and from an MQTT broker, opening Antelope real-time data to the wider MQTT ecosystem.
orb2ws rework. The websocket server now uses a single shared ORB connection fanning out to all connected clients, backed by a new ORB-to-JSON conversion API.
Q8 calibration support. q82orb gains Q8 calibration machinery with automatic calibration window detection, and dbcalibrate has been extended to work with Q8 dataloggers.
dbnoise and dberesp Qt ports. Two more tools move to Python/Qt, continuing the user-facing modernization from Antelope 6.0 and Update 1.

ORB-over-MQTT

MQTT is the standard lightweight publish/subscribe protocol used across IoT and telemetry systems, and Antelope can now speak it natively. orb2mqtt publishes ORB packets to an MQTT broker, and mqtt2orb brings packets from a broker back into an ORB.

Both programs are built for unattended operation. They support TLS connections, Last Will and Testament (LWT) messages so downstream consumers know when a feed drops, budget and flow control to keep a constrained link healthy, configurable topic mapping, oversize packet handling, and automatic reconnect logic.

This opens some practical doors: feeding station telemetry into an existing MQTT-based monitoring stack, bridging ORB data across networks where MQTT is the sanctioned transport, or subscribing lightweight field devices to a subset of real-time streams without a full Antelope installation on the receiving end.

orb2ws Rework

orb2ws, the websocket gateway for browser-based clients, has been reworked around a single shared ORB connection that fans out to all connected websocket clients. Previously each client cost an ORB connection of its own; now the server reads each packet once and distributes it, which scales much better as browser clients multiply. The rework is backed by a new ORB-to-JSON conversion API that other tools can reuse.

Q8 Calibration Support

Update 2 completes a significant piece of Q8 datalogger integration: calibration.

q82orb now includes Q8 calibration machinery with automatic calibration window detection, so calibration signals are recognized and marked without operator bookkeeping.
dbcalibrate has been extended to process Q8 calibrations, bringing Q8 to parity with the established Q330 calibration workflow.

dbnoise and dberesp Qt Ports

dbnoise and dberesp have been ported to Python/Qt, joining dlmon and dbbuild from Update 1 in the modernized GUI lineup.

dbnoise computes and displays noise power spectra for selected station-channels, with the familiar Peterson low- and high-noise model reference curves overlaid, switchable acceleration or velocity response, and log or linear frequency display.

The new dbnoise on Python/Qt showing noise power spectral density with Peterson noise model reference curves in both acceleration and velocity views.

dberesp displays instrument response curves from a database, overlaying magnitude and phase across the full frequency range for as many responses as you care to compare at once.

The new dberesp on Python/Qt overlaying magnitude and phase response curves for multiple instruments.

Bug Fixes and Smaller Changes

orbwfproc now drops a packet with a bad sample rate instead of letting it kill the whole task.
stationxml2db now defaults to CSS 3.0 and handles schema mismatches gracefully instead of erroring out.
quakeml2db gives clearer messages when handed invalid XML.
db2stationxml no longer crashes on an invalid database.
seedlink2orb improves statefile fallback behavior when resume state is missing, adds miniSEED v2 GENC output support, and renames some parameter-file parameters.
orb2seedlink silences a spurious log error caused by calibration_manager.
ttgrid adds a new reject_stations parameter-file feature and completes the joined-view mapping fix in setupgrid. This refines the ability to tune the earthquake association process for large networks.
q82orb man page previously described the startcal -duration argument in the wrong units. It is minutes, not seconds.
liboorb fixes a crash for an edge case where stash packets do not have a content type derivable from the srcname.

Get Antelope 6 Update 2

Antelope 6 Update 2 is available now. Existing license holders with an installed Antelope 6.0 instance can run the antelope_update program to install patchD, which provides the new features along with the fixes above. For users freshly installing Antelope 6.0 from here on out, Update 2 is applied automatically during the standard installation process.

For questions, email info@brtt.com or visit brtt.com. Current customers can request support by emailing support@brtt.com.