Device Variables Template Description
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Please provide your device variables data in an ASCII text file, according to the following format, using the following vocabularies and recommended practices.
Example Template
We have created a template file and an example file you can download.
Overall Format
All entries are tab-separated. All records are separated by your operating system's EOL.
The first line contains metadata for the entire file.
Each line thereafter represents a single device on which you are reporting.
Metadata Line
The first line contains metadata for the entire file. The tab-separated fields are:
- Name of provider
- Email of provider
- Unique entity represented by this file (Institution, Organization, Project, or combination of those)
- Unique ID for this file (in case you want to submit it again with corrections)
Data Lines
Each data line contains the following tab-separated fields:
- Your unique ID for this device/record
- Device manufacturer (full official name)
- Device model (as written on nameplate)
- Comments you want to provide about this entry (free text excluding tabs or EOLs)
- List of comma-separated variables that the device can measure or objects that it can sample
- List of comma-separated variables that the device can outpu
- Additional instances of the last two fields as needed.
Vocabularies
The following vocabularies may be used for each of the above fields.
Each data line contains the following tab-separated fields:
- Unique ID: any string you want to use
- Device manufacturer: company or organization name on official company web site
- Device model: text string uniquely characterizing the device, per the manufacturer
- Comments: free text
- List of measurables: (CF, BODC, SWEET?, ..)
- List of output variables: (CF, BODC, ..)
Possible Alternatives and Additions
We may want to get the data in XML format. But that would be harder.
I don't like what I'm asking for with respect to sampling devices -- how can we improve that?
The following may be additional data we'd like to obtain with these files.
Do we want to collect device type (obviously will be all over the map as people use their own terms...)?
If we want to list the variables for multiple configurations of the device, we could list them in successive paired fields following the last two fields above.
