Table of Contents
To Open MATLAB...
1. Double-click on MATLAB icon on desktop to open MATLAB. When MATLAB opens, four screens will appear (you will only see three screens).
<Student Version>: Control - Triton: From this window, you can open files, set the viewing parameters, identify coordinates, control the viewing speed, and save files.
<Student Version>: Plot - Triton: This is the main viewing window. You can set the window to view spectrograms or a time series through the Plot Control window.
<Student Version>: Log Arctic Data: This window appears on top of the Message window and makes it faster to pick calls and record your data. There are several buttons and text boxes for you to fill in, and when you press ‘Log Event’ at the bottom, it automatically logs your data to an excel spreadsheet.
<Student Version>: Message – Tritonv1.7a.20080320_arctic: The Message window is still there, underneath the Log Arctic Data window. It functions as before by displaying messages such as ‘file opened’ and still allows you to use ‘pickxyz’ to display coordinates. However, it does not output data to a log file.
To Open TRITON…
1. Single-click on the “<Student Version> Command Window”.
2. Open Triton by typing in triton at the Matlab command prompt. It should open “Tritonv1.7a.20080320_arctic.” If a different version opens, close it and set the Matlab Path (fileà set path) so that the “Tritonv1.7a.20080320_arctic” folder is at the top.
3. The Log Arctic Data window will open automatically on top of the Triton Message window.
4. Input your initials in the User Initials box. Hit Enter or click anywhere in the Log Arctic Data window, and it will automatically display an event number. The event number contains your initials, today’s date, and a count starting at 00001. The count automatically updates each time you pick an event.
5. To open the data file, go to File in the Control window and click on Open LTSA File.
6. Browse until you find the folder you want and then click Open.a. First select My Computer
b. Then click the Arctic folder you want and Open.
c. Then open the Month & Day folder you want.
d. You will see a LTSA file. Click on it and then click Open.
This is similar to what your desktop will look like when you open the file.
In order to view the spectrogram in both a large time frame and a small time frame, click the Zoom In tool located in the Control window, then click the location in time on the Plot window where you want to zoom in.
To Set the Viewing Parameters…
In order to analyze the sound files, you must set the viewing parameters.
See the Arctic Spectral Parameter Guide.
To Scroll through the Data…
To scroll through the data, go to the Control window and click on the desired arrows. Remember that the green box controls the top spectrometer and the blue box controls the bottom spectrometer.
> moves one frame forward in time
< moves one frame backward in time
>> moves forward in time as fast as the computer can calculate
<< moves backward in time as fast as the computer can calculate
To Use the Arctic Logger User function…
1. Once you zoom in on some interesting sounds, try to move backward and forward in time until you have an idea of when they start and when they end. Also, play with the parameters of the spectrogram, listen to the sound, and compare it to your “sonar-person’s guide” to try and identify the sound.2. When you are ready to log your acoustic event, click the Event Start button. Then use the cursor to pick the start time (and frequency and power) of your sound (this is similar to pickxyz). Similarly, when you get to the end of your sound, click Event End and make a cursor pick. If you do not like your choices, you can click either button again and re-pick the start time or end time.
· Hint # 1: If the sound is tall across a lot of frequencies (like a click), don’t worry about what frequency you’re picking.
· Hint # 2: For sounds that go on a long time, like ice cracking or a beluga’s whistling & clicking, you don’t need to pick every single call. Just pick when you see them start and end.
· Hint # 3: You can pick a start time, then scroll through spectrograms, and then pick the end time (you don’t have to pick the start and end within a single spectrogram frame).
3. Now, under the Sound Type panel, choose a button that describes what you think made the sound. Is it biological (do you think an animal made it)? Is it ice? Is it manmade (like a ship or an airgun explosion)? Or, if you don’t know, pick “Unknown.”
4. If you chose Biological or Manmade, a pulldown menu to the right under “sound source” will be highlighted. You have a choice of animal species (beluga, bowhead, walrus, etc.) or manmade sound types (ship, sonar, airgun). These pulldown menus also contain “unknown”. So, for example, if you think an animal made the sound but do not know which animal, you can still select “Biological” and then “Unknown.” (or, if you think the sound was manmade but don’t know the source, pick “manmade” and then “unknown”).
5. In the Comments box, type in anything useful to describe the sound. For example, if you have an unknown sound that looks like a bunch of dots at 5 kHz, you could write “repeated dots at 5 kHz”. Or if it looks & sounds just like the previous event that you logged, write “same as previous.” Or if the background is really noisy, you could write “noisy background, hard to see calls”. Or, if you’re just picking a time in the data to remind you where you left off, you can write “stopping here for the day” or something like that.
Note: You don’t have to write comments for every sound, but it might be helpful to write “none” or “no comment” if that’s the case, just so later on you’ll know you didn’t forget this step.
6. Check that all your boxes and buttons are filled in the way you want, then press Log Event at the bottom of the Log Arctic Data window. The first time you do this in your Triton session, it will ask you where you want to store the data. Select your folder from the drop-down list, and click Save.
Note: If you left anything blank, a warning message will appear—click OK inside the warning message box and then fill in whatever blank spots you need to.
7. The program will write your picks to an Excel spreadsheet and then clears the time picks and the comments field in the Log Arctic Data window. Notice that the “event number” counter increases by +1.
8. You are ready to log the next event!
If you want to open your Excel log spreadsheet, go to the folder you selected, and the filename of the spreadsheet will be “ArcDatLog” plus your initials and the date. You can open the Excel file and change things if you want, but you have to save changes and close the file before you can log another event.
IMPORTANT: THE EXCEL LOG FILE MUST BE CLOSED FOR ARCTIC LOG TO WORK. If your Excel file is open, Microsoft gets confused and asks you if you want to overwrite the existing file. Click No, save any changes in Excel that you want to keep, and then close the Excel file.
