Installation and Configuration

The showapi python code can be installed using a python wheel which can be downloaded. Alternatively the showapi software can be downloaded to your machine from the ARG Git Repository. Please be aware that if you install or upgrade the package you will overwrite and erase any custom site specific settings stored in your current installation.

After installing the software you will need to address the following issues:

  1. Ensure that you are using netCDF4 version 1.2.7 or greater. For example from a console box type C:> conda list. Earlier versions do not support large file I/O on windows and will fail. We downloaded our copy of netCDF4 from PyPi and installed it with pip.
  2. Ensure you have access to the SHOW File Calibration Database. If you are on the USASK network then this is available to ARG users in subdirectories of \UTLSSHOW. Users located off campus may download the the database from the SHOW CDB Git repository. Note that the download may take some time as it is several hundred megabytes at the time of writing (2017-07-06) and may grow with time.
  3. You must check and modify the site specific configuration to suit your needs.

Configuration

The showapi stores configuration settings in text files based upon yaml. Primary configuration for each version of the SHOW instrument is stored in the SHOW File Configuration Database (CDB). These files are external to the showapi software modules but must be present on your machine. They can be downloaded from the SHOW CDB Git repository. One configuration file is installed with the showapi software modules that must be manually modified on each installation so it can properly connect to the SHOW CDB and SHOW data storage folders. This file contains

  • location of the SHOW CDB.
  • base directory for SHOW Level 1A data files.
  • base directory for SHOW Level 1B data files.
  • default version of SHOW Level 1A files loaded by showapi routines.
  • default version of SHOW Level 1B files loaded by showapi routines.

The location and contents of the site-specific configuration file can be displayed using the showapi software:

>>> import showapi.site_settings
>>> showapi.site_settings.display_site_settings('er2_2017')

Checking configuration for instrument ( er2_2017 )
please ignore any warnings that may be generated while I read the configuration (unless the code crashes.)
completed parsing configuration. Here are the details
    OK: Site specific configuration file   =  G:\software\ARG_Instruments\SHOW\SHOW_ER2-2017\software\show_config\yaml_files\er2_2017_site_settings.yaml
    OK: Default level 1A version           =  0.1.4
    OK: Default level 1B version           =  0.1.5
    OK: Level 1A directory on this machine =  .\TESTDATA\Level1a
    OK: Level 1B directory on this machine =  .\TESTDATA\Level1b
    OK: Calibration database directory     =  \\utls\SHOW\2017-ER2Flight\CalibrationFileDatabase
You should manually edit
G:\software\ARG_Instruments\SHOW\SHOW_ER2-2017\software\show_config\yaml_files\er2_2017_site_settings.yaml
to change these values

>>>

From the output you can identify the location of the site specific configuration file and manually edit the file to meet your requirements. Note that the file is yaml based which is very strict about spaces and tabs, i.e. no tabs ever and try to replicate the format of the installed file. In particular do not introduce any new spaces between fields.