.. _usage:

Usage
=====

|dlfn| is a library of tools for reading, processing, and analyzing
data from oceanographic velocity measurement instruments such as
acoustic Doppler velocimeters (ADVs) and acoustic Doppler profilers
(ADPs). |dlfn| is organized into subpackages for working with each data type
it supports, as well as base packages


.. It also includes tools for reading buoy data from the `National Data Buoy Center <http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/>`_ (NDBC).

This page documents general and basic usage of the |dlfn| package, for
detailed information on more specific uses of the package see the
[usage-specific]_ page.

Working with ADV data
---------------------

Acoustic Doppler velocimeters (ADVs) make measurements of velocity at
a point in space (e.g. the `Sontek Argonaut-ADV
<http://www.sontek.com/productsdetail.php?Argonaut-ADV-6>`_, and the
`Nortek Vector <http://www.nortek-as.com/en/products/velocimeters>`_).

Reading ADV data
................

Currently |dlfn| supports reading of binary Nortek Vector, `.vec`,
files. Assuming you are working from an interactive prompt, you can
read a Vector file like this::

  >>> from dolfyn.adv import api as adv
  >>> dat = adv.read_nortek(<path/to/my_vector_file.vec>)

This returns a :class:`~dolfyn.adv.base.ADVraw` object, which contains
the data loaded from the file::

  >>> dat.u
  array([-0.92200005, -0.87800002, -0.85400003, ..., -0.88900006,
         -0.85600007, -0.98100007], dtype=float32)

  >>> dat.mpltime
  time_array([ 734666.50003103,  734666.50003139,  734666.50003175, ...,
          734666.50973251,  734666.50973287,  734666.50973323])

Working with ADV data
.....................

|dlfn| has several tools for performing useful and common operations
on ADV data. Most of these are available via the ADV
:mod:`~dolfyn.adv.api`. For example:

.. literalinclude:: examples/adv_example01.py





.. Plotting ADV data
   .................