Introduction to dbdreader

The python package dbdreader is a package that can be used to read binary data files that are generated by Teledyne WebbResearch Slocum gliders see http://www.webbresearch.com.

The Slocum gliders produce binary data files that contain engineering data or science data. Engineering data are stored in sbd or dbd files, where sbd files contain a subset of the dbd files. Science data are stored in tbd and ebd files. Also here the tbd files contain a subset of the parameters in the ebd files.

The dbdreader package provides APIs for accessing a single binary file or multiple binaries. The package lets you, for example,

• read the measured depth of a given dbd file,

• retrieve CTD data from multiple ebd files,

• retrieve heading, roll and pitch, interpolated on the time basis of depth

Installing dbdreader

dbdreader is written for python3. Python2.7 is not supported.

The code is developed at github (https://github.com/smerckel/dbdreader) from where you can get the source code.

Alternatively, the latest dbdreader package is available from the python package index (https://pypi.python.org), so that you can install it using pip.

Install using pip:

pip install dbdreader

The dbdreader module contains a C extension, which requires a compiler to be installed. Furthermore, as of version 0.5.1, dbdreader is able to uncompress lz4-compressed data files, which requires the lz4 library and header files.

Fedora	dnf install gcc lz4-libs lz4-devel
Ubuntu	apt-get install gcc liblz4-1 liblz4-dev
Windows	Microsoft C++ build tools + lz4 ?

Dbdreader quickstart

The package comes with a number of examples. However, to give you a flavour of how easy it is to read one or two variables, consider the example code below.

import dbdreader

dbd = dbdreader.DBD("unit204-2014-212-0-0.dbd")
t,d = dbd.get("m_depth")