exporting .csv files

[Anonymous]

I’ve had my SignalHound SA44 about a week. Is there any was to save a traces as a .csv file rather than a picture? This makes post processing of the data much easier.

[Andrew]

Hello Eduk,

Yes there is a way to do this. There is an ‘Export’ button on the trace controls, which will allow you to export a CSV of the form

MHz, min(dBm), max(dBm)
MHz, min(dBm), max(dBm)
…

This will export the current trace selected in the trace combo box. You can export any configured trace this way.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Regards,
A.J.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, saw it the next day!Ed

[David]

Another question related to this, is it possible to export the traces in the Zero Span mode to a CSV file? I would like to export the FM Demod waveform, as well as the IQ waveform.

[Andrew]

Hi David,

We only have a binary format IQ file. You will probably need to write a small bit of code to convert this to human readable format. There is a a section in the user manual about the format, but it is simple enough to describe the basics here. The binary file contains alternating IQ values stored as signed 16-bit shorts that have been normalized with a scalar. The scalar is stored in the companion XML file. You will need to unpack the IQ values, convert them floating point values, and apply the scalar (multiply each IQ value by the scalar).

We have talked about writing a conversion utility to convert our files to CSV, but don’t have immediate plans for this.

There might be other tools like Matlab which could greatly simply this process.

Let me know if you have additional questions.

Regards,
Andrew

[David]

That works, the binary file is very easy to decode, I have used that before. I wanted to get the Demod Waveform in csv format, but I will just write my own demod utility using the binary dump.
Thanks,
-David

[Andrew]

Sounds good David.

Additionally, in case you weren’t aware, we have C DLL programming interface for our devices, if you wanted to retrieve IQ data directly from the receiver programmatically, you can do that. The API files are found on the devices respective downloads page, you will find an IQ streaming example in the downloads folder.

Regards,
Andrew

[Author]

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