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What's New › 2006
What's New?
Recent Changes to SCRC Data Capture and Analysis Software
(From August 2004 to December 2006, beta release)
G. R. Detillieux
Spinal Cord Research Centre,
The University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Canada R3E 0J9
Capture
- Added support on Linux for UEI PowerDAQ A/D cards having more than 16 channels
(up to 64) or more than 12 bits per sample (up to 16 bits supported).
- Added scrolling capability to channel table in parameter setting screen,
and in calibrate program, to handle more than 16 channels.
- Support also added for higher-gain PowerDAQ "L" series cards.
- Setup scripts, pdqsetup.*sh, will autodetect the PowerDAQ card type and set
environment variables appropriately for any PD2-MF series card.
A new MAXADCHANS environment variable holds the number of channels on the card.
The new ADBOARDNUM environment variable can be set prior to running the
setup script, to select a card other than the first in systems with more than
one PowerDAQ card.
- The calibrate program allows for A/D settling time before taking its level
measurement, to correct a problem with erroneous calibration caused by noise
when PowerDAQ cards begin sampling.
It also adjusts the default pulse threshold for pulse measurement to be
appropriate for 12 or 16 bit A/D cards.
- Updated PowerDAQ support to handle 3.6 driver versions on Linux 2.6 kernels.
Analysis
- The parameter file format was extended to handle min. & max. levels for more
than 16 traces or waveforms.
- Added a new waveform blanking method that subtracts an averaged template of
some recurring artifact from the signal.
- Added display of frame numbers above tick marks when traces appear above
raw waveform display. Trace number and name are also shown on this line.
- Added a feature to Bins-save to store bin numbers, original frame numbers and
trigger times in .frd file when saving raw (preview) data. Also sets tags in
new .frm file according to bin numbers, and shows time & frame ranges as well
as original file name in .txt file.
- Now displays the run name and W.F. names during waveform parameter setting.
- Fixed to show the overlay W.F. at as close a resolution as possible to the
W.F. used for parameter setting, to avoid misalignment between the two.
- Added new parameter "Round out scale bars" so user can disable rounding
up/down of ends of scale bars in graphs.
- Added new parameters "Average trace ampl. sample" and "Average second trace
ampl. sample" to get mean amplitude calculations in trace amplitude graphs.
- During visual trace parameter setting, now only traces whose tag value is in
the "Tag list" are displayed.
- Fixed a bug in Set/Range/Relative/Length so it won't set length to 0 when you
specify length as "1p" (i.e. one single sampling period).
- Filter can now use larger values for calibration zero and height in the new run
header, if needed, to avoid overflow.
- The View operations now show the shortest key sequence for setting parameters,
when more than one path in the menus sets a parameter.
- Updated the help file, fixing typos and discrepancies in parameter ranges and
initial values.
Added a missing help page for the waveform parameter "Spike upper threshold."
- Added a -W option to the rawwfplt analysis script, to specify a waveform list.
The script now better handles target file names with no numbers or suffix and
adds these as needed.
Raster
- Added an Alt-pens feature to specify an alternating list of pens for plotting
traces.
- The raster program now displays the trace number and name on the top title line.
Miscellaneous
- The software has been extended to support up to 100 traces or waveforms in
run files, and A/D samples of up to 16 bits.
The run file format was extended to handle this, with a new run header file
(.rhd) being created when the extra channels must be stored.
File formats for calibration, analysis and qm parameters were also extended.
Zero and height values in run header can now exceed 16 bits.
Programs make use of extensions only when necessary to store extra information,
to ensure backward compatibility with older versions of software whenever
possible, or will automatically convert older formats.
- New consistency checks and fixes have been added to salvagerun to handle the
new run header format.
The run length correction calculation in salvagerun was fixed to avoid
occasional unnecessary adjustments.
- The axon2run utility now extracts time tags from ABF files and stores them
in the run description (.txt) file.
It can also now properly handle ABF files with episodes larger than 64 KB.
- Fixed lsrun to properly handle spaces in file or directory names.
Fixed lsrun's -r option to sort the file list.
- Fixed the renamerun utility to use the POSIX rename function where possible,
rather than link and unlink system calls, so it can work on file systems that
don't support hard links.
- Changed the wf2wav utility to automatically set the optimum volume.
Added the wf2mp3 command to create MP3 audio files from waveforms.
Added the wf2dsp command to directly output sound from waveforms on Linux systems.
Added the -t option to these commands to set the time range to be converted.
Fixed bugs in these commands, in waveform sampling frequency calculation and
byte swapping on "big-endian" machines (e.g. PowerPC-based Macs).
- Changed hpgl2gif to make lines a little thicker when using the -G option.
Added the hpgl2cps utility to generate colour PostScript from HPGL files.
- Improved colour printing capabilities:
The sdump command's -save option can save in several common image file formats,
or print to a colour PostScript printer.
Supports colour PostScript printers by default from Plot/Plotter selection.
- The calibrate program now prints using the lpvialpr script on lpr-based systems.
- Updated file name length checks for Mac OS X, to allow up to 255 characters.
- Updated source to build on newer GCC 4.x based Linux and Mac systems.
Support added for building Mac OS X 10.4 universal binaries.
Supports newer Linux distributions like Fedora 6 and SuSE 10.
Directory of What's New Listings
SCRC WWW administrator:
www@scrc.umanitoba.ca
Copyright © G. R. Detillieux, Spinal Cord Research Centre, The University of Manitoba.