Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Forum for discussing PicoScope version 6 (non-automotive version)
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gbgb
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Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by gbgb »

One important piece of information (at least for me) that gets lost when exporting psdata to MAT or CSV is the time-stamp of each waveform in the file.
Adding it to MAT files should be very simple, since the datablock definition is very flexible - just add another data block with this info.
For CSV file this may be a line at the begining of the file.
By the way - The time-stamp in PicoScope is at a resolution of seconds - I do not know if it is an inherent limitation, or just a matter of rounding up for display - if it is the latter, I think that there should be an option to display it at the time resolution that the system saves.

Is it possible that you will add this data in an upcoming revision?

Martyn
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by Martyn »

I will pass this information onto the development team for consideration for a future release.

thank you for your feedback :)
Martyn
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robios
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by robios »

Any update on this? It's been already 5 years. I think having timestamps of each waveform in an exported file is pretty essential. The problem is that there is NO way to do that. PLEASE ADD THIS FUNCTION! Otherwise please release the psdata file format.

Martyn
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by Martyn »

We haven't implemented this yet as there are a number of possible timestamps, and the usefulness of each would depend upon what you are trying to achieve.

The scopes do not have any clock functionality so probably the most useful timestamp of all is not possible to achieve at the present time, that is the actual time of each waveform capture to the scopes internal memory.

Our Windows software will timestamp each waveform buffer with the time that the aggregated data was read from the device to the applications memory. This works at second resolution as a higher accuracy has no particular purpose when two identical setups running at the same time, would come up with different values due to the random effects of the underlying operating system. So using the timestamps to give accurate timing information between buffers would not be possible.

The final timing is related to the file writing of all the data to disk when using FIle->Save, or File->SaveAs, and this appears in the file information.

What timings are you specifically looking for ? and what would you hope to achieve using this information ?
Martyn
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robios
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by robios »

Thanks for the reply, Martyn.

I by myself design digitizers so I understand what you are saying. All I want for now is the timestamp the software (PicoScope) stamps with second resolution. We are taking pulses from our sensor and the gain of the sensor drifts in a long time scale so we want to correct that, but to do that we need timestamps for each pulse we took. Second resolution is just fine for this correction.

Please, please, please, consider adding this function to the converter.

Martyn
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by Martyn »

I have added your request to our feature list :D
Martyn
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elzaphod
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by elzaphod »

Dear Martyn,

I just came across this post and would like to ask if there is any progress? A second resolution is very fine for me...


Cheers,
Hendrik

williambaker
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Re: Add individual waveform timestamp to exported files

Post by williambaker »

Howdy,
Is there any update on this? The information in the psdata files should be easy to export to other formats - .mat files already spit out a dictionary, so adding another entry - 'timstamp' (or 'wintimestamp' if you insist) should not be some impossible task. Also, UTC is a very common, very convertable, high resolution timestamp that windows can provide, so this idea that windows can only provide a 1s resolution is wrong I think, not to mention that the 'type' of timestamp you provide is mostly irrelevant to your users, whether you provide a universal timestamp or a timestamp relative to the scope shouldn't matter as long as you provide documentation for us to convert or account for. 8 years is a long time for your userbase to wait for basic functionality. Maybe a new years update?

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