GraceDbBot

A Telegram bot which you can use to get information on gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo.

Usage

Add the bot by searching for GraceDbBot on Telegram or click here. Bot is down and project is archived. To host it yourself see below

Currently the bot responds to the following commands:

/help or /start

Shows a welcome message and an overview of all possible commands.

/latest

Shows the latest measured event.

/event

Select an event where you want to see the details of.

/stats

Shows an overview of all measured events during observational run 3.

/status

Shows the current status of all three detectors.

/subscribe and /unsubscribe

After subscribing you will automatically receive a message when a new event was measured or an existing event was updated or retraced.

Installation for self hosting

If you want to host the bot yourself, you can install it as follows.

1. Clone this repo

   git@github.com:Roald87/GraceDB.git
   

2. Create a new virtual environment with pip or conda

   conda create -n gracebot python=3.7 
   conda activate gracebot
   # not all package are available for installation via conda
   pip install -r ~/path/to/gracebot/requirements.txt

   # Install venv to create virtual environments
   python3 -m pip install --user venv
   # Create a new virtual environment
   python3 -m venv gracebot
   # Activate the virtual environment you just created
   source gracebot/bin/activate
   # Install required packages 
   pip install -r ~/path/to/gracebot/requirements.txt
   

3. Create a new telegram bot via the instructions here.

4. Create a new file /path/to/gracebot/gracebot/config.py.

5. Add the following five variables to config.py. For API_TOKEN use the token you were given when you registered the new bot. Do not share this api token or any of the other variables in this file with anyone, since it can be used to control your bot. Then secret, preliminary_command, update_command and retraction_command should be hard to guess randomized strings. You can generate these yourself. They are used to trigger bot commands.

   API_TOKEN = '110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw'
   secret = '2eh4y5gqfliqoy2t'
   preliminary_command = 'fjsapdofih9328fhjdsa'
   update_command = 'adsfj933092hpajsvbdfa32'
   retraction_command = 'q23tgrgaqgn3ooq3g'

6. Download ngrok and register an account to expose gracebot to the internet.

7. Create a file /path/to/ngrok/config.yml and add your authtoken to the config file

   authtoken: dfasj8oiafh3fsadjfhsdjfha
   tunnels:
       default:
           proto: http
           addr: 8080

8. Start the ngrok tunnel

   cd ~; nohup ngrok/ngrok start --all --config="ngrok/config.yml" &

9. Start gracebot and the listener which listens for new events

   # Activate the virtual environment
   source ~/path/to/venvs/gracedb/bin/activate
   printf 'Starting GraceBot.'
   cd ~/path/to/gracebot/
   nohup python3 gracebot/main.py > gracebot.out 2>&1&
   sleep 3
   printf 'Starting GCN listener.'
   nohup python gracebot/listener.py > listener.out 2>&1&

Disclaimer

I'm not an expert on gravitational waves. So if you see something which doesn't make sense, please let me know.