Saving metadata with waveform

[Halooie1]

I am exploring purchase of a Pico 4264 for recording electric organ discharges of weakly electric fishes. I wish PicoScope would make it easier to record metadata each time a waveform is saved. Typically we need to record information such as the operator name, a field number, specimen number, water temperature, water conductivity, etc. along with date and time with each recording made in the field and have this data written into a header above the wave text when exported to a text file. Would it not be possible to allow the user to customize the number and names of text metadata fields saved with the waveform data? This would be so helpful!

[Gerry]

Hi Halooie1,

What you could look at doing to save metadata along with the captured data is create an application that will get the metadata and signal data for you and save them to a file. You have 2 options of doing this as follows:

• 1. Create an application using our Software Development Kit (see here: https://www.picotech.com/library/oscill ... nt-kit-sdk) to do exactly what you ask.
  2. Create a shortcut that runs PicoScope 6 from the command line after running a batch file that asks the operator to enter the Metadata info (with the exception of time), and then saves that info to an info file. You can then set up an alarm in PicoScope 6 that saves the data on capture, and then runs an executable file (batch file converted to an executable) that saves a metadata file (with the same name as the data file, so that you know which metadata applies to which data) by copying the contents entered by the user in the info file, and adding the time of the data capture (time of writing the file).

Option 1 will allow you to have the metadata in the same file file as the data but requires you to have or get knowledge of using one of our application languages/IDEs, and work with our functional examples on Github (see here: https://github.com/picotech) to control and access data from the hardware PicoScope.
Option 2 won't put the metadata in the same file as the data file, and will only work if you are performing single captures, but only requires that you have or get knowledge in writing batch files (we can help you with the rest on our help desk).

Regards,

Gerry