LOBOViz CGI Data Service

The LOBOViz server has a public CGI (Common Gateway Interface) that allows remote clients to request and receive LOBO sensor data via HTTP (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol). This page describes how to access the CGI and retrieve sensor data.

CGI URL

The LOBOViz data CGI for this server is published at the following URL:

CGI Data Query Parameters

Parameters are appended to the URL after a '?' character and are each is subsequently separated by a '&' character.

The following parameters are supported:

ParameterDescription
min_datefirst day of data query in format [YYYYMMDD]
max_datelast day of data query in format [YYYYMMDD]
ycomma-separated list of measurement names for dependent variable(s)
data_formatrequired to be 'text' for text output

The following measurement names are supported for the 'y=' independent variable list:

NameDescription
cdomcolored dissolved organic matter [QSDE]
conductivityconductivity [S/m]
oxygendissolved oxygen [ml/l]
fluorescencefluorescence [micro g/l]
nitratenitrate concentration [micro M]
oxygen_satoxygen saturation [ml/l]
oxygen_percentoxygen % saturation [%]
voltagepower supply voltage [V]
salinitysalinity
scatteringscattering coeff [1/m*sr]
temperaturewater temperature [C]
turbidityturbidity [NTU]

CGI Data Result Format

The data are returned as tab-separated text representations of numeric values. The first line of the returned data is a header of tab separated names and units for each data column. Each subsequent line displays local (PST) date/time in format [YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss], followed by a numeric value for each requested measurement, all fields separated by tabs.

Example

For example, if you want to retrieve nitrate and salinity for September 29, 2008 the URL would be:

http://columbia.loboviz.com/cgi-data/nph-data.cgi?min_date=20080929&max_date=20080929&y=nitrate,salinity&data_format=text

Click the above URL to see the tab-separated text data returned by the server.

Scripted Usage

Any programming language with HTTP support can be used to directly access the LOBO data CGI and process the returned sensor measurements. Alternately, HTTP utilities such as wget or cURL can be invoked to retrieve the data and save to local file for later processing.