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PicoScope 6 User's Guide 39

Note. CSV files are not the best choice of format if you are working in a language that

uses the comma character as the decimal point. Instead, try using the tab-delimited

format which works in almost the same way.

Tab-delimited

Tab-delimited files store data in the following format: -

Time

(µs)

Channel A

(V)

Channel B

(V)

500.004

5.511

1.215

-500.002

4.724

2.130

-500

5.552

2.212

The files have a tab character after each value on a line to represent a column of data

and a carriage return at the end of the line to represent a new row of data. These files

work in any language and are a good choice for sharing data internationally. The 1

million values per channel limit prevents excessively large files being created.

6.1.1.1.2

Binary formats

PicoScope 6 can export data in version 4 of the .mat binary file format. This is

an open format and the full specification is freely available from the www.mathworks.

com website. PicoScope 6 saves data into the MAT-File format in a specific way, which

is detailed below.

Importing into Matlab

Load the file into your workspace using this syntax: -

load myfile

Each channel’s data is stored in an array variable named by the channel. So, the

sampled data for channels A to D would be in four arrays named A, B, C and D.

There is only one set of time data for all channels and this is loaded in one of two

possible formats:

1. A start time, an interval and a length. The variables are named Tstart, Tinterval

and Length.

2. An array of times (sometimes used for ETS data). The time array is named T.

If the times are loaded in as Tstart, Tinterval and Length then you can use the

following command to create the equivalent array of times: -

T = [Tstart : Tinterval : Tstart + (Length – 1) * Tinterval];

Exploring the file format

The full file specification, available from www.mathworks.com, is comprehensive so

this guide does not describe the entire format. Instead, this guide describes enough of

the format to allow you to get data from the file and use it in your own program.

The variables described above (under Importing into Matlab ) are stored in a series

of data blocks, each preceded by a header. Each variable has its own header and data

block and the corresponding variable names are stored with them (such as A, B,

Tstart). The following sections describe how to read each variable from the file.