AirSensor Instantiation

The first object the user encounters is the AirSensor object. This structure is used to keep track of sensor attributes and can be used to import and access sensor datasets. First, users create an instance of the AirSensor object type, specifying the make and model of the sensor. Below is an example of instantiating the AirSensor object for the ‘Toco Toucan’ example mentioned in the Quickstart Guide:

sensor = sensortoolkit.AirSensor(make='Toco',
                                 model='Toucan')
sensortoolkit.AirSensor() attributes

Attribute name

Description

make

The name of the manufacturer for the sensor. Users are recommended to
replace spaces with underscores.

model

The name of the sensor model. Users are recommended to replace spaces with
underscores.

Constructing the sensortoolkit Directory Structure

sensortoolkit utilizes a folder structure for storing datasets and organizing related files. This folder structure is located at the path to a directory the user wishes to store evaluation-related content in. This path is referred to as the project path and is set by using the sensortoolkit.presets.set_project_path() method. Sensor and reference datasets as well as supplementary statistics are stored in a /data folder. Figures created by the library are stored in a /figures folder. Testing reports are saved within a /reports folder. Users should run the following line of code to construct this folder structure at the user’s project_path:

sensor.create_directories()

Note

The above code snippet assumes that the user named their instance of the sensortoolkit.AirSensor object sensor. If a different name was chosen, replace instances of sensor with [custom_name] to access the instance attributes such as the create_directories() method.

Users should see the following printed to the console indicating the constructed directory structure (note that the parent folder location where the folders are placed will depend on where you define the project path - the code block below follows the ‘Toco Toucan’ Quickstart example, where the project directory has been set to C:Users...Documentstoucan_evaluation):

Creating "data" subdirectory within C:\Users\...\Documents\toucan_evaluation
..\data\eval_stats
..\data\reference_data
....\data\reference_data\airnow
......\data\reference_data\airnow\raw
......\data\reference_data\airnow\processed
....\data\reference_data\airnowtech
......\data\reference_data\airnowtech\raw
......\data\reference_data\airnowtech\processed
....\data\reference_data\aqs
......\data\reference_data\aqs\raw
......\data\reference_data\aqs\processed
..\data\sensor_data
..\data\eval_stats\Toco_Toucan
..\data\sensor_data\Toco_Toucan
....\data\sensor_data\Toco_Toucan\processed_data
....\data\sensor_data\Toco_Toucan\raw_data

Creating "figures" subdirectory within C:\Users\...\Documents\toucan_evaluation
..\figures\Toco_Toucan

Creating "reports" subdirectory within C:\Users\...\Documents\toucan_evaluation

Directory Structure

Below is the directory structure created by running the sensor.create_directories() function for the Toco_Toucan sensor type.

toucan_evaluation                       <-- Top level directory. Set as ``work_path``.
├───data                                <-- Sensor and reference data, statistics, setup configuration files, etc.
│   ├───eval_stats
│   │   └───Toco_Toucan
│   ├───reference_data                  <-- Subdirectories organized by reference data source.
│   │   ├───airnow
│   │   │   ├───processed
│   │   │   └───raw
│   │   ├───airnowtech
│   │   │   ├───processed
│   │   │   └───raw
│   │   └───aqs
│   │       ├───processed
│   │       └───raw
│   └───sensor_data                     <-- Subdirectories organized by sensor type.
│       └───Toco_Toucan
│           ├───processed_data
│           └───raw_data
├───figures                             <-- Figures. Subdirectories organized by sensor type.
│   └───Toco_Toucan
└───reports