.dat parameters and (falsely IDed) MCRack files

[constanc...@gmail.com]

Hello all,
I am a brand new user of the program, and only still finding my way with python, so I apologize in advance if my question is silly.
I recently installed the most recent release of the program on a Windows 10 machine, and am trying to test it out on some .dat files from a recent recording from an Amplipex system. As expected, I was prompted to enter extra information (sampling rate, data offset, etc.) for mcs_raw_binary file types, and I have added to the params file (with clean indentation in the original):

[data]
file_format    = mcs_raw_binary    
stream_mode    = None            
mapping        = (my path to the kampff 32 chan probe file) 
suffix         =                      
global_tmp     = True                
overwrite      = True                
sampling_rate  = 20000.0
data_offset    = 0
dtype_offset   = auto
gain           = 1

[detection]
...

However, I now receive the error "Wrong MCS header: file is not exported with MCRack"
I don't use MCRack- Is there something wrong with the way that I have entered the extra parameter information, or is something else entirely going on?
Many thanks in advance,

Constance Holman

[Pierre Yger]

Dear Constance

If you are not using an MCS amplifier (multi channel system) file format, then indeed, you should not say file_format = mcs_raw_binary :-) I do not know what is the output of your Amplipex system: a raw binary file? A custom proprietary file format? If this is a raw binary file, then you must say 

file_format = raw_binary

and then enter manually the extra parameters needed by this file format, i.e. sampling_rate, data_dtype (the type of the data, int16, float32, ...), and if you do have a header, the size of that header (data_offset, but this is optional). Before launching the code, you can always test how data are loaded by using the preview mode (see documentation on-line)

>> spyking-circus mydata.dat -p

I can see that you are using SpyKING CIRCUS 0.5. This version is now able to read various file formats, and the most simple one is the raw_binary one, which is simply a giant matrix of size nb_channels x nb_timesteps saved on your drive. If you have proprietary file format, please tell me how do you load them, because we'll have to think about ways to write a wrapper for the data

Hope this helps,

Pierre

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[constanc...@gmail.com]

Dear Pierre,
Many thanks for the (incredibly!) quick response and helpful advice. Indeed, I misunderstood the documentation about .dat files. Amplipex uses a simple raw_binary format and int16 data type. As per the preview mode, looks like everything is working fine :)
Thanks again,

Constance