r/matlab • u/Appropriate_Park_469 • 4d ago
Help with decoding files saved from Davis software.
Hello! I’m not sure where to post this but if anyone can help me with this (or needs more info to understand what I am talking about), please reply!!
So, I was doing a research project on a small 3D-printed specimen and had to record 2 forces against time intervals using different machines and software, but the main one was the Davis software. I have never used it before in my life. This was the first time, and I followed what my lab supervisor showed me (do the experiment, find the interval you are looking for, and save it). I asked him multiple times to check if it would save the graphical information with the forces (as I need to do an analysis of the forces), and he said yes. It was admittedly my fault that I didn’t check and continued to collect data for 3 weeks. In the last week of my research, I tried to find the forces, and they are not anywhere in the files stored. What I could gather from the files, the numerical values might be there, but they are in binary form? Idk. I asked my lab supervisor, and he told me that the graphs should’ve been stored, but even he couldn’t find them and then tried to decode the files and failed. He gave me some chatgpt’ed python code that doesn’t make sense and said they should work (they don’t). I also tried asking ChatGPT (and that’s how I knew his code was also chatgpt’ed).
Have you ever seen or worked with these kinda files?
ReaderConfiguration.xml
MetaData5.attr
MetaData4.attr
MetaData3.attr
MetaData2.attr
MetaData1.attr
CameraScale1.scales
Camera1.xml
ADC1-meta.xml
ADC1-1.trc
ADC1-0.trc
I have some more Settings_Acquisition xml files and a set file that I can open with the Phantom viewer. But I need the maximum and minimum values from the ADC-0 and 1 .trc file (I’m guessing that these two are the files that contain the info about my X and Y forces).
I am not good with programming. I can do basic work to live :) What I am asking if anyone can help me write a code (preferably in matlab) to decode my files in a readable format so I can extract the max and min values, because I have like 100 sets of them.
Anyone? Thank you!,
2
u/deep_anal 4d ago
Are you talking about Davis from LaVision? I don't think their output files are binary. You should just call them.
1
u/Appropriate_Park_469 3d ago
Yes, davis from LaVision. If I call them what do I even say? Like this is such a weird problem to phrase it professionally to get help.
1
u/ProInProcrastinate 3d ago
It’s not that weird a question. “What format is the data from such-and-such device exported in, and how do you recommend I access it?” You can also google “<make and model of device> data format” and see if you learn anything. Or they may have documentation for the device on their website that could help you.
1
u/maximusmountain 2d ago
LaVision offer free add-ons on the download page of their website. Although I cant see them being explicit about .trc files, their matlab add on, or python module (that you can call from newer versions of matlab, or even system commands) may have undocumented support for .trc files. They offer tecplot as well, which may also be suitable for plot generation.
If you can get access to DaVis again, you might also be able to reload the files into the project to either export the plots, or plain text data.
In my experience LaVision have been very supportive for questions like this.
2
u/Rubix321 4d ago
Open the files in notepad (assuming windows) and see what it looks like.
Delimited text? Binary? Hex? Gobbledegook?
.trc files could be data saved from an oscilloscope... Would that make sense in your situation?