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Lizard Data Cleaner

Introduction

Monitoring the movement and habits of sleepy lizards (Tiliqua rugosa) in the field is being undertaken by the School of Biological Sciences at Flinders University. The activity monitoring is undertaken using a miniature computerized 'Lizard Activity Meter' (data logger) which is carried by the lizard. The activity meter is a purpose built device designed and manufactured by the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics. The activity meter outputs a text based (CSV) log file of the lizard’s location and other information from the on-board electronics when a data download is requested. The lizard is released to the wild by the Biology project officers after enabling the logging system and captured again using RF tracking after approximately two weeks. At this time download is requested and collated with other hand written data and observations.

Over a data collection season multiple log files are collected for each lizard. This has become a problem as the manual effort in manipulating the files is clumsy and files are not easy to analyze separately. In addition the log files contain errors which need to be identified and resolved before they are made ready for analysis.

Features

This software:

• Automates the data cleaning and error checking process while maintaining data integrity.
• Provides the opportunity to clean and merge one or more lizards log files at once.
• Gives the user the option of cleaning manually or automatically.
• Provides an intuitive user interface to enter field notes and control the cleaning process.
• Merges the log files from each lizard
• Generates a single field-notes file containing information covering all lizards for a season

Acknowledgement

The development of this software was a component of a larger project funded by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS).

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