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HDF5 Generation

If you'd prefer to manually create your own HDF5 files, that's fine as well!

To create an HDF5 file that works with the Dataviewer.Space platform, there are just a few criteria:

  1. The HDF5 file should not have any groups. All datasets should be written to the root of the file
  2. There have to be at least two datasets in an HDF5 file.
    • One of these datasets have to be named time, and have to have a type of f64, where each value is a UNIX epoch timestamp in milliseconds. This dataset cannot have any null values.
    • All other datasets must be of type f64 (true/false values must be converted to 1/0), but can contain null values (null should be written to HDF5 files as f64:NAN as defined by IEEE 754)

To format the dataset names, make sure the following conditions are met:

  1. Dataset names cannot contain the following characters:
  • \
  • /
  • :: (double colon)
  • (whitespace)
  1. For all datasets other than time, dataset names should follow this schema: name__unit__
    • name is the channel name
      • Channel names cannot contain the following characters:
        • \
        • /
        • __ (double underscore) (a single underscore is fine)
        • :: (double colon)
        • (whitespace)
    • unit is the channel's unit
      • If you don't know the channel's unit, put raw (or bin for true/false data)
      • unit can contain only letters and numbers (no special symbols like ^ or _)