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pyCast is the newest version of ShakeCast with a backend written in Python and a robust Angular frontend. Although there are new features in the web application, pyCast is generally lighter weight and new users should find that it’s relatively easy to install. Existing ShakeCast users will find that pyCast has a powerful interface for downloading and running scenarios as well as notification customization.

Windows Installation

The newest ShakeCast windows installer is available here.

Run the Windows installer as an administrator. Python will automatically be installed before the ShakeCast and you may see some command windows open and close; that’s okay, this is just the application initializing! In order to determine if ShakeCast was installed correctly, use your web browser to navigate to your localhost. You can login using the default administrator account by entering “scadmin” for both the username and password.

Your application is ready to go! Checkout Inventory Setup below to learn how to prepare your inventory and configure ShakeCast.

Linux Installation

There are multiple ways to install pyCast on Linux, but we recommend you use the PyPI package. Installation requires python 3.6 or higher and root access.

sudo yum install epel-release python3 python3-pip
sudo pip3 install usgs-shakecast
sudo python3 -m shakecast.app.startup
sudo python3 -m shakecast start &

Contributor Installation (GitHub)

Contributors may want to install pyCast directly from GitHub to have the most updated code.

Download from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/usgs/shakecast.git

Install the required Python libraries and start ShakeCast. Installating within a virtual environemnt is preferred.

cd shakecast
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
sudo python3 -m shakecast.app.startup
sudo python3 -m shakecast start &

Docker Installation

Docker is our preferred method of installation ShakeCast for our internal instances. We find it to be very stable and easy to update and are leaning on containerization more and more. It’s our hope more customers will adopt this method of running ShakeCast.

git clone https://github.com/usgs/shakecast.git
cd shakecast
git fetch origin --tags
git checkout $(git describe --tags)
docker-compose up

After Installation…

In order to determine if ShakeCast has installed correctly, use your web browser to navigate to your localhost. If you did not install ShakeCast on your local machine, you’ll navigate to the address of the server you used instead of your localhost. You can login using the default administrator account by entering “scadmin” for both the username and password.

Inventory Setup

Download an Inventory Workbook here and create your initial inventory. Your ShakeCast inventory is made up of facilities, notification groups, and users. You can store all of this invormation in the ShakeCast Inventory Workbook to ensure your data is compatable with ShakeCast (including future versions). Once your information is input, you can export the data as XML files, which are easily read by ShakeCast.

Learn more about the ShakeCast Inventory Workbook here

Upload to ShakeCast

Drag and drop the XML files exported by the inventory workbook onto any page in the admin application. Once the file is over the web interface, the upload screen will appear.

Setup a SMTP Server

ShakeCast must be able to access an SMTP server in order to send email notifications. This can be done using your own SMTP server, GMail, Outlook, and many others. To configure your SMTP server, navigate to Settings after entering the admin application.