Data Turbine Integration

Background

Data Turbine is a real-time streaming data engine that lets you quickly stream live data from data loggers, laboratory equipment, web cams and even Java enabled cell phones. It acts as a "black box" to which applications and devices send and receive data. It can receive data from various sources (e.g. data loggers) and then send data to various sinks (e.g. visualization interfaces, analysis tools, databases, etc). It has "TiVO" like functionality that lets applications pause and rewind live streaming data.

The GCE Data Toolbox was extended to support Data Turbine in 2013 as part of an NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) project led by Tony Fountain at UCSD (see more information). The toolbox can function as a 'sink', retrieving numeric and text channel data from a local or remote Data Turbine server for post-processing and analysis. This functionality was demonstrated in April 2013 at a training workshop at the LTER Network Office ( Software tools and strategies for managing sensor networks), and an overview of this software integration is also available here.

Enabling Data Turbine Support

Data Turbine support functions are included in GCE Data Toolbox distributions 3.5.0 and higher. However, users must also install the Data Turbine application (minimally rbnb.jar) and Data Turbine MATLAB Toolkit (DTMatlabTK) and then register the installation paths in MATLAB to enable these functions. Instructions are provided on the Data Turbine Installation page.

Data Turbine Harvesting

Functions in the DTMatlabTK software library support harvesting Data Turbine channel data on a timed basis. This functionality is described on the Data Turbine Harvesting page. Extension functions are provided in the GCE Data Toolbox for generating GCE Data Structures from harvested data to leverage the toolbox for data documentation, QA/QC and analysis. These harvest functions can be run from the MATLAB command line, and a graphical console application for configuring and managing harvests is currently under development.

Contact Wade Sheldon for information on leveraging the command-line tools for harvesting Data Turbine channel data using the GCE Data Toolbox.