Importing Data From Custom Applications

If you are writing your own data acquisition program and you want to be able to import the data into Graphical Analysis, the data will need to be organized into "data sets."

{Data Set 1}
{Data Set 2}
...
{Data Set N}

Each Data Set is a tab delimited block of text with the following format:

Vernier Format 3
{DATA SOURCE} {DATE} {TIME}
{Data Set Name}
{Column1 Long Name} {Column2 Long Name} ... {ColumnM Long Name}
{Column1 Short Name} {Column2 Short Name} ... {ColumnM Short Name}
{Column1 Units} {Column2 Units} ... {ColumnM Units}
<BLANK LINE>
{C1R1 Data} {C2R1 Data} ... {CMR1 Data}
{C1R2 Data} {C2R2 Data} ... {CMR2 Data}
...
{C1RL Data} {C2RL Data} ... {CMRL Data}

where the Data Set has "M" columns and "L" rows of data. The data set delimiter is a "M", tab delimited zeros.

The number of columns does not need to be consistent between data sets nor do the number of rows need to be consistent between data sets or columns within a data set.

Example 1

Vernier Format 3
My\GPS\Device 8/22/2007 12:51:07
Mike's Travel Data
"Greenwich Mean Time" Longitude Latitude Altitude

Time
(hours)
Long
(degrees)
Lat
(degrees)
Alt
(meters)
6 -8 20 1000
7 -8 20.5 1500
8 -8 21 1250
9 -8 20.6 1400

Example 2

Vernier Format 3
My\GPS\Device 1/22/2008 2:38:45
Sarah's Travel Data
"Greenwich Mean Time" Longitude Latitude Altitude

Time
(hours)
Long
(degrees)
Lat
(degrees)
Alt
(meters)
2 -10 18 1000
3 -10 18.25 1500
4 -10 19 1250
5 -10 19.5 1400