Text-Cycle Data Driver
Information
Loads point-data from text (such as CSV or Tab Delimited) and Excel files, and plays them over-and-over.
The files must conform to the expected format, shown below in the File Format section.
| Driver Info | Detail |
|---|---|
| Driver Type: | Live and History |
| Platforms: | All |
Settings
There are two options when setting up the driver.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Filename | The full path to the file on the server machine or an accessible network share |
| Delimiter | The delimiter character between columns - usually a comma (,) in CSV files, or a Tab in Tab-Delimited files. Not used for XLSX files. |
Example
Let's take a look at the following CSV file…
TIME,POINTA,POINTB,_POINTC 0,10,20,0 1,11,19,0 2,12,18,1 3,13,17,1 10,20,0,1 20,11,19,0
In this case, the delimiter is a comma.
The header contains the names of each column. The first column must be a time offset, which is the number of total seconds that have elapsed since the first row of the file.
The second row provides a value for each column. The second row must have a time offset of 0.
If you have any gaps between times (ie. in the example data above, there is a line for 10 seconds and the next line jumps straight to 20 seconds), the data will be interpolated to smoothly transition between those points over time.
Discrete Columns
Note that column names that have a leading underscore are marked as discrete values - the value of the data will only change when the next row is reached rather than being smoothly interpolated.
Taking two lines from the example…
10,20,0,1 20,11,19,0
The values at 15 seconds into playback would be 14.5, 9.5 and 1. The third channel (POINTC) won't drop to zero until 20 seconds.
Note that the leading underscore is ignored when binding a property to this point. Even though it's called '_POINTC' in the header, you'd use the name 'POINTC' (without the underscore) when connecting to it in ARDI.