Bogdan Hlevca's Home Page at University of Toronto

Useful Scientific Python tools

readRawBinADCP

RDI binary and P-file formats are compact and efficient for storing data, but most projects require that data to be read into MATLAB, or other scientific languages like Python, in order to be used. If for MATLAB there is a very good package written by Rick Pawlowicz, for Python there is none so far, or at least none that I found that also works.

I used initially Rick's package, but the slowness of MATLAB has forced me to look for alternatives. I recommend SAGE, or SciPy and Numpy. They all are excellent options and complement each other and have Python as a glue language.

I took Rick's excellent package and translated it into numerical Python and I improved the reading algorithms for the binary file, and structured the files in object oriented style, so that it is easier to maintain. The end result is a tool that performs 2-3 times faster that its MATLAB counterpart.

You can download it from here : readRawBinADCP.zip

or,

get the latest sources from: Bitbucket repository .

You can find the original MATLAB package here: http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~rich/#RDADCP and many other related MATLAB tools.

In my package I have also included a demo script (main_torharb.py), so you can see how it works. The functions have been tested only on raw filed data files from a few different instruments, with various firmware and software versions.

Please let me know if it works for you and also if it does not.

Good luck …

Note:

I have many python packages in the works as I transition my workbench from MATLAB. I find Python much faster and easier to work with. I will post them here as they will be readied for prime time.

Last updated: 14. February 2013