Did you know there is free software available that lets you look even deeper into Alive recorded session data than can be done from within Alive?
Ryan made a quick video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8s8bAYGhgA) showing you how to find, download, and use to use easy, free, Kubios HRV software. The he shows you a little bit about how to analyze and PRINT Alive sessions. Kubios HRV is used for published statistic papers on HRV, and is a great way to print out session graphs and do more detailed statistical analysis on Alive Sessions. Opening a session in Kubios is easy, just go to open and choose an Alive session, these are already formatted to specifically work for Kubios HRV.
To print from Kubios, generate the session report from the header report icon. This can be saved as a .pdf file & printed out. Also possible to take screenshots of the analysis windows & print these.
My team is planning to use Alive to collect breath rate data. We are using the G8P Amp with the respiration belt attachment, and have research mode on during sessions. We are shifting through the many raw output data files but are not sure which one contains what we're looking for. Is documentation that explains each of the data files, and/or the variables in the summary csv file, available?
No, there isn't any documentation specifically for the raw data. If you look in the Alive Pioneer user guide you read information about the Alive specific statistics, such as average heart rate, valence, bvp amplitude, etc. (you can open various user guides with the buttons on the bottom of the Alive main menu).
The raw data files themselves are pretty self-explanatory, they are simply lists of timestamps (the time of the data reading) plus the raw value. You can open Alive to see the units for the various measurements by checking the graph training screens. These raw measurements, such as skin conductance, temperature (which would be in C or F depending on what you have selected on the choose user screen), heart rate, etc. Heart rate data is also present in the Kubios.txt file. This file is unique in that it lists a series of inter-beat-intervals. Because each measurement shown is the time between the last two beats, this file does not contain timestamps, as it is in fact a record of the time in between each heart beat, and Kubios (and other programs) expect the data in that format.
The raw data files are easy to open in Excel, they are tab delimited with a new line for each new data pair.
Please let me know if you have any further specific questions and we can build whatever documentation you are looking for in this forum post.
If you mean the standard breath pacer displayed to the user (when not using a GP8 Amp respiration belt), please see the columns Seconds Per Breath (which shows that speed of the pacer) and Breath Pacer Time Percent (which shows the value of the breath pacer, with 1 being at the top and 0 being at the bottom). Together those two columns describe the breath pacer shown to the user.
If you are looking for respiration (breathing) belt data from the GP8 Amp see the Real Breath Pacer and Real Breath Pacer Raw columns. The Raw is the raw data from the breath pacer, which has a maximum value of 1000. This is the raw data coming from how stretched the belt is. The Real Breath Pacer is that same measurement, but ranged between 0 and 1, so that over a few seconds your maximum raw reading becomes the ranged 1 and your minimum raw reading becomes the ranged 0.
Regarding Real Seconds Per Breath, that is something I think the programmers were messing around with, but I don't believe you should use that data, you should determine this yourself. This .csv file automatically outputs all of our data channels, so it has a lot of extra data in it. Stick with the more raw readings for research, and calculate things such as the actual breathing rate using standard algorithms or visual analysis.
I am indeed working with respiratory belt data from the GP8 Amp. Among the session output files, is there a respiratory data file sampled at a higher rate than the data in the csv summary file?
If you are using the GP8 Amp and turn on Save All Raw Data (in the choose user screen in Alive) most data channels get an extra high data rate save file. Respiration did not have one of these, but it should. We are working now on an update that will add raw high data rate files for respiration. I'll let you know when its ready.
Did you know there is free software available that lets you look even deeper into Alive recorded session data than can be done from within Alive?