michael-betz / readtrc

Little Python class to read .trc binary files from LeCroy Oscilloscopes

readTrc

Little Python helper class to read .trc binary files from LeCroy Oscilloscopes. Tested on Python3.

Installation

Just copy the readTrc.py file in your python path.

Usage

from readTrc import Trc
trc = Trc()
fName = "./C1_00000.trc"
datX, datY, d = trc.open(fName)
plot(datX, datY)
print(d)
# Or alternatively
plot(trc.x, trc.y)
print(trc.d)

Note that in the above example d is a dictionary which contains the metadata. For example:

{'ACQ_DURATION': 0.0,
 'ACQ_VERT_OFFSET': 0.0,
 'BANDWIDTH_LIMIT': 'off',
 'FIRST_POINT': 0,
 'FIRST_VALID_PNT': 0,
 'FIXED_VERT_GAIN': '50_mV/div',
 'HORIZ_INTERVAL': 1.6666699270695418e-11,
 'HORIZ_OFFSET': -0.000100000004229008,
 'HORIZ_UNCERTAINTY': 9.999999960041972e-13,
 'HORUNIT': 'S',
 'INSTRUMENT_NAME': 'LECROYSDA18000',
 'INSTRUMENT_NUMBER': 15238,
 'LAST_VALID_PNT': 12000001,
 'MAX_VALUE': 22914.0,
 'MIN_VALUE': -23170.0,
 'NOMINAL_BITS': 8,
 'NOM_SUBARRAY_COUNT': 1,
 'PAIR_OFFSET': 0,
 'PIXEL_OFFSET': -0.0001,
 'PNTS_PER_SCREEN': 12000000,
 'POINTS_PER_PAIR': 0,
 'PROBE_ATT': 1.0,
 'PROCESSING_DONE': 'no_processing',
 'RECORD_TYPE': 'single_sweep',
 'RIS_SWEEPS': 1,
 'SEGMENT_INDEX': 0,
 'SPARSING_FACTOR': 1,
 'SUBARRAY_COUNT': 1,
 'SWEEPS_PER_ACQ': 1,
 'TIMEBASE': '20_us/div',
 'TRACE_LABEL': '',
 'TRIGGER_TIME': datetime.datetime(2015, 9, 10, 17, 5, 19, 127343),
 'USER_TEXT': '',
 'VERTICAL_GAIN': 8.631759556010365e-06,
 'VERTICAL_OFFSET': 0.0,
 'VERTICAL_VERNIER': 1.0,
 'VERTUNIT': 'V',
 'VERT_COUPLING': 'DC_50_Ohms',
 'WAVE_ARRAY_COUNT': 12000002,
 'WAVE_SOURCE': 0}

See here for more details.

readtrc's Issues

Usage with pyvisa

Hi!

How can you use this script with pyvisa, where you directly import data in form of bytes and not in the binary form you get when loading file?

Br Kristian

arrays from trc files are twice the size

Hi,
Thanks for the script to read the *.trc files. But when i copied the file to the folder and read the data, i used to get arrays (x,y) of twice the length that they are supposed to be. I attach a sample .trc file.
Can you please help me to solve it.
Thanks
Nitesh
C1.zip

.Trc file from labnotebook results in 'UnicodeDecodeError'

Hi @yetifrisstlama ,
Thanks for the script! I used it with a directly exported .trc file first, but I also wanted to use data I exported as labnotebook (.lnb). So I was able to unpack the notebook, but the contained .trc file can not be read via readTrc().

UnicodeDecodeError                        Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-39-f7bc7e777e0d> in <module>()
      1 
      2 fName = "MyLabNotebook--00000/C4.trc"
----> 3 datX, datY, m = readTrc.readTrc( fName )

~\path\to\readTrc.py in readTrc(fName)
     61         # Get Instrument info
     62         #------------------------
---> 63         d["INSTRUMENT_NAME"]  = readX( fid, "16s",    wdOffset + 76 ).decode().split('\x00')[0]
     64         d["INSTRUMENT_NUMBER"]= readX( fid, endi+"l", wdOffset + 92 )
     65         d["TRACE_LABEL"]      = readX( fid, "16s",    wdOffset + 96 ).decode().split('\x00')[0]

UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xeb in position 12: invalid continuation byte

I would try to fix this on my own, but I don't where to look for. For sure, it's line 63 in the source code, but I don't know what's the difference between the pure .trc file and the extracted one.

Of course I could use wavestudio to export the data from the labnotebook as csv. But it would be handy to skip that step.

Instrument used: LECROYWR640Zi

Shifted x-values

Hi, and thank you very much for the useful script.
I compared the return values with the original file on my Lecroy WaveRunner, and found that the x-values were all shifted by one HORIZ_INTERVAL.
It worked fine after I change row 181 to
x = np.arange(len(y), dtype=float)
Thanks!
Yona.

Warning, unsupported file template: Brain-Quick file

How to read this file format?
Thnk you!
EEG_77531.zip