This paper describes a perforating gun detonation monitoring system developed to meet the need for real-time monitoring of perforation effect in the petroleum industry. A high-sensitivity acceleration sensor, serving as the response module of the physical characteristics of the tubing vibration, acquires a set of vibration signals of the whole physical process during the impact after the detonation of the shaped charge. The jump point in the monitoring process is extracted by comparing the signal's short-time energy. The amplitude, energy, and envelope characteristics of the signal are then evaluated. From the time-frequency characteristics of the tubing vibration upon the detonation of the perforating gun, a judgment is made as to whether the perforating gun has detonated. Tubing vibration experiments were conducted involving different perforating guns. The results suggested that the proposed monitoring method is able to monitor perforating guns of different shaped charges with a perforating depth between 500m-3500m and in oil wells with an inclination of 0 • − 90 •. As a means of vibration detection, this method also works well in other types of vibration monitoring.