Setting Up for sensortoolkit

Setting up for sensortoolkit requires downloading Python and an IDE, creating a project directory, and downloading your sensor and reference data. Given below is a detailed guide for setting up for sensortoolkit.

Note

Users will need an installation of Python 3.8 or greater. It’s highly recommended that users download an Anaconda distribution of Python. Anaconda is a package distribution of Python that includes many widely used libraries as well as the Spyder IDE for editing and compiling code. Anaconda is free for individuals.

Setup

1 - Download Python and IDE

As sensortoolkit is a python package, we will need Python to use it. In Installing and Updating sensortoolkit, Conda is used as it’s a simple open source environment and package manager. Hence, I suggest downloading Miniconda or Anaconda as both are free installers for Conda and Python. They mainly differ in the number of packages automatically downloaded. The Conda documentation, found here, can help you decide which package manager to use.

sensortoolkit works best in development environments that allow you to simultaneously develop scripts, view and explore variables, and, execute code. These types of software utilities are called integrated development environments (IDEs). To create scripts that utilize the sensortoolkit library, it’s recommended that users develop their code in an IDE. One popular IDE for Python included alongside Anaconda distributions of the coding language is the Spyder IDE which can be accessed via the Anaconda Prompt with the following command:

spyder

Caution

The PATH environment variable specifies the directories to be searched to find a command. When downloading softwares, don’t forget to adjust your path environment to add the respective software to your path. This will come up in the installation steps for Miniconda, Anaconda, and Spyder IDE.

2 - Create a Project Directory

You will need to decide where to store scripts, data, figures, and reports that are related to your current project. This could be any folder location on your computer. I suggest creating a new folder in your documents directory. Let’s call this directory toucan_evaluation.

3 - Download Sensor and Reference Data Sets

Example data sets for the Toco Toucan example are included in the GitHub repository under the /example_datasets folder. Download these files to your project directory. The files include one collocated reference monitor data set called airnowtech_example_reference_data.csv and three Toco Toucan sensor data sets called toco_toucan_RT01_raw.csv, toco_toucan_RT02_raw.csv, and toco_toucan_RT03_raw.csv.

Tip

To download the .csv files from Github, select the .csv file and click View raw or the Download button. The raw file will open in your browser. Then, right-click anywhere on the page and select Save as... and save the file to the project directory, toucan_evaluation. Make sure it is saved with a .csv extension.