Suggestion for Windows based plot tool - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Zeyneb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2015, 11:48:30 pm
content: Dear people,I would like to evaluate some digital signal processing concepts on my PC. I don't like MatLab but I'm reasonable at C++. There is some library called FFTW to be able to generate frequency domain data from time domain data. I am writing these values to comma-separated values CSV files to be able to display them with a tool. I don't like the graphing facilities of Excel so I am looking for some (almost) free application to help me on this. I'm currently using SciDAVis. I've put an example of a plot in the attachment.SciDAVis was able to do a cubic spline interpolation to represent an analog signal.However I am looking for an even better tool which is able to read a engineering quantity from the CSV file and optimize the axis tick markers accordingly. As the tool knows it is time data. Values like 0.001s to 0.007s should be displayed as 1ms, 2ms, ... , 7ms.Does anyone have a suggestion for a tool which is capable of doing so with CSV file import?Best regards,Zeyneb

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 12:03:35 am
content: Have you looked at gnuplot? I haven't, myself, but I've seen excellent results from it.Tim

author: Paul Price
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 12:05:48 am
content: Present the .00x Sec data as x1000 to eliminate the leading zeros and dec. pt. and get Excel to format and re-label the axis as mSec

author: DIPLover
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 12:38:11 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on February 05, 2015, 12:03:35 amI've used gnuplot on OSX and was very satisfied (automated from Perl because I needed 192 graphs) but I hear it doesn't play too well with Windows. Was that just FUD?

author: Fenichel
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 05:21:31 am
content: SigmaPlot is the standard in biomedical circles, but it's not cheap.

author: Lukas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 07:14:26 am
content: Quote from: DIPLover on February 05, 2015, 12:38:11 amWorks just fine on windows. It associates .plt files with gnuplot, so after having written/generated the plot script, you can just double-click on it to see the graph.

author: lgbeno
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 12:32:32 pm
content: iPython all the way. Sometimes they call it Jupyter but it is amazingly matlab like yet free

author: DIPLover
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 02:40:10 pm
content: Quote from: Lukas on February 05, 2015, 07:14:26 amGlad to hear that, will have to try it out!

author: diyaudio
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 05:13:57 pm
content: Quote from: Zeyneb on February 04, 2015, 11:48:30 pmSignal Processing, Dont like Matlab ? the latest Matlab 2014b has better quality plots. Have you tried Octave as an alternative. C++ means no toolbox which means room for bugs.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 05:38:44 pm
content: If you don't like Matlab (I feel your pain, the language is horrid ...) but want that sort of functionality, try Python with the Numpy/Scipy suite. The Matplotlib included with it is excellent and Numpy code often outperforms Matlab, sometimes by orders of magnitude.If you don't want to fight with installing Python and all the Numpy/Scipy dependencies, Spyder is a good bundle and you get a "Matlabish" IDE as well:https://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/This is the link to Matplotlib (the library is included in the above):http://matplotlib.org/Spline interpolation example:http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/tutorial/interpolate.htmlAnd a CSV loading (scroll down for Numpy example, which you will need for the plotting):http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/unpingco/Python-for-Signal-Processing/blob/master/Example_CSVs.ipynb

author: gmb42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 05:42:55 pm
content: A bit left field, but have you heard of R?R Studiois quite a nice tool, R has packages to plot as well.

author: Conrad Hoffman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 06:15:20 pm
content: Like anything it has a learning curve, but I was very pleased with gnuplot on Windows 7.

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 05, 2015, 07:43:08 pm
content: +1 Numpy/ScipyYou may need to google a bit in order to get started.