glider-playground 0.2.1

A fast, web-based NetCDF explorer for glider data.

Glider Playground

A fast, web-based NetCDF explorer for viewing and validating glider data. This tool provides a highly responsive UI to explore oceanographic .nc files without running computationally heavy processing steps on the fly. It was built as a simple tool to learn about glider data at NOC (National Oceanography Centre).

Live Demo: You can try out the site with demo data right now at glider-playground.co.uk. (Please note: this is running on my personal Raspberry Pi, so it might be a little slow!)

Installation

To explore your own data locally with full performance, you can download the tool via pip. Ensure you have Python 3.9+ installed. It is recommended to install this inside a virtual environment to keep your system clean.

pip install glider-playground

How to Run

Once installed, you can start the application from anywhere in your terminal by simply typing:

glider-playground

This will start the local server and automatically open the application in your default web browser. To stop the server, return to the terminal and press Ctrl+C.

How to Use

Loading Data

.nc data files must be placed inside a local data folder (this folder is created automatically in your current directory the first time you run the app). You can click the Folder icon in the top navigation bar to open this directory. Once files are added, select your dataset from the dropdown.

Need sample data? OG NetCDF files can be downloaded from the BIO-Carbon Deployment Catalogue. Thanks to NOC for making these resources available.

Views & Plotting

• Basic Plotting: Select your X and Y variables. You can optionally select a third variable to map to the Colour axis and choose a specific colourmap.
• Presets: Use the View dropdown to select built-in, pre-configured oceanographic views (e.g., Thermal Structure, Salinity Profile). You can also save your own axes and colour combinations as Custom Views.

Interaction & Analysis

• Smart Zoom: Click and drag a box directly on the plot to zoom. When you zoom on X or Y, the Colour axis auto-scales its contrast to focus on the data currently in view.
• Manual Trimming: Use the interactive range sliders on the X, Y, and Colour axes to precisely trim data limits.
• Data Inspector: Click any point on the plot to trigger the Inspector. This reveals exact values in the sidebar and updates the mini-map to show the glider's GPS location at that moment.
• Reset: Click Reset Lims to return to the full dataset overview and original colour scaling.

Quality Control (QC) Filtering

If your dataset contains standard _QC variables, the tool cleans the data automatically.

• You can adjust which data points are visible by providing a list of flags (default is 1,2,5,8 for good/interpolated data).

Exporting

• Plot All: By default, the tool downsamples to ~250,000 points to keep the UI snappy. Tick Plot All to render every single point at high resolution.
• Download: Click the Download icon to save your current view as a PNG.

Uninstalling

pip uninstall glider-playground