bico

Binary Converter for converting ETH eddy covariance binary raw data to ASCII CSV files

bico converts eddy covariance raw data files from a compressed binary format to uncompressed ASCII (human-readable). Converted files can then be used for flux calculations in EddyPro.

Instruments send their data in data blocks. One data block contains all data from the respective instrument at the time of measurement. For example, the data blocks sent by sonic anemometers comprises the wind variables, sonic temperature and other variables. Data blocks from gas analyzers comprise concentrations (e.g., CO2, H2O), instrument metrics (e.g., signal strength), among others.

The data blocks implemented in bico are listed in the folder src/settings/datablocks. The data block information that is used in code to convert binary to ASCII is given in .dblock files. Accompanying information can be found in the respective .md files in the same folder.

Installation

• Latest release: https://github.com/holukas/bico/releases/latest
• bico can be installed directly from source by specifying the desired version number via pip install https://github.com/holukas/bico/archive/refs/tags/v1.6.0.tar.gz
• Using poetry, the file pyproject.toml can be used to install the environment that contains all required dependencies to run the script.

Usage

GUI

• bico can be run via GUI, e.g. in the poetry environment under Windows run
  • python.exe .\bico.py -g (for this you need to be in the folder bico/src where the file bico.py is located)

CLI

• bico can also be run from the command-line interface (CLI). This can be used to
  execute the script automatically at certain intervals. For example, bico is used to convert binary files to ASCII csv files for the site CH-OE2 once a day:
  • python P:\Flux\RDS_calculations\_scripts\BICO\bico-v1.2.3\src\bico.py -f Z:\CH-OE2_Oensingen\20_ec_fluxes\2022\raw_data_ascii -d 8 -a
  • python calls python
  • P:\Flux\RDS_calculations\_scripts\BICO\bico-v1.2.3\src\bico.py is the location of the script bico.py
  • -f Z:\CH-OE2_Oensingen\20_ec_fluxes\2022\raw_data_ascii specifies the folder where the BICO.settings file and the raw binary files for this site (CH-OE2) are located. The settings file can be created via the GUI, or edited directly with a text editor.
  • -d 8 converts binary files from the last 8 days to ASCII
  • -a means "avoid duplicates", converts only binary files that were not converted before. The folder specified with -f is checked if a specific files was already converted. If the file already exists in the folder, then it is not converted again.