Using LabVIEW to read file of unknown format/ type/content

[DonRoth]

It certainly seems like these 3 waveforms could be, say the first 3 waves associated with the first 3 scan points.  Or it could be a wavetrain associated wtih one scan point (although I would expect a set of echoes with decreasing amplitude if that was the case).  There is something still odd about the trace. The waves themselves are a little off from the morphology of the echo that I would expect, but are plausible.  What seems a little more strange is that the large ehoes show +/- (compression/rarefaction) character as expected, but the noise following the echoes seems to be all +.

Boy this sure looks like we are getting close.  The header stream should likely give us an ascii string that makes sense (i.e. has continuous information about the scan itself).  How did you know where the header ended, and the stream of data began, and did you figure out a header stream that made sense?  If you look at the delimited string output from my VI, you can pick out some information that starts to make sense:

16-Feb-2007      Ken Aniolek part "after test" using identical settings    10.5 x 12   Mylar & Silicone Oil.


It is possible that this is all of the information and that the header is 1024 or 2048 bytes long, with the rest filled with nonsensical information.  Again, seeing that this is indeed a trial and error process now, I posted my post prior to checking all of these things.  (I was thinking there might be a more well-defined way to go about decoding things).  I did not check Christian's attachment on strategy yet (checking in here from home right now....).

Thanks,

Don