Data Storage

Blackchirp stores its data in the selected Data Storage Location. The location may be changed from the Settings → Data Storage menu item.

Data storage location dialog

At this location, Blackchirp creates four subfolders:

  • experiments: Per-experiment data files, organized by experiment number (see below).

  • log: Application log files, plus the log/crashes diagnostic reports.

  • rollingdata: CSV files containing long-running monitoring data.

  • textexports: Default location for XY export files from plots.

All of Blackchirp’s data files are written in plain-text CSV using the separator character ;.

Each experiment is associated with an experiment number, and the location of its data files within the experiments folder is derived from that number. To avoid an excessive number of directories at a single level, Blackchirp collects experiments in groups of 1000 and stores each group under a single directory. For a given experiment number X, its data are stored in experiments/Z/Y/X, where Z = X//1000000 and Y = X//1000 (integer division, discarding the remainder). For example, experiment 123456789 is stored in:

experiments/123/123456/123456789

and experiment 480 is stored in:

experiments/0/0/480

Every experiment writes a common set of files describing its program, acquisition, and hardware state. CP-FTMW and LIF acquisitions add their own data and configuration files within the same folder. The pages below describe each group of files in detail.