Glider Playground
A fast, web-based explorer for ocean glider data. Load OG1 NetCDF files — or pull live deployments straight from BODC — and instantly plot, inspect, QC, and view them in 3D, all in your browser with no scripting required.
Live demo: glider-playground.co.uk (running on a Raspberry Pi — may be slow)
Install & Run
pip install glider-playground
glider-playground
This opens the app in your browser. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop it.
Virtual environment recommended. If you use one, activate it before running.
Install from source
git clone https://github.com/Orlando-PB/glider-playground.git
cd glider-playground
pip install .
Loading Data
Click the file button (top-left) to open the file panel. You can:
- Browse live BODC deployments — pull published datasets directly from the British Oceanographic Data Centre
- Add files — pick individual
.ncfiles - Add folder — load an entire folder of
.ncfiles at once
Your own files are processed once in the background. Once ready, click a file to load it.
File format: input files must be in OG1 format (or OG1-compatible) — the OceanGliders community NetCDF standard.
Live data is provided by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC).
Views & Layout
Glider Playground is a flexible, multi-panel workspace — plots, the globe, and the 3D track are all panels you can arrange however you like.
- Drag a panel by its header to reorder or swap it with another
- Split any panel (the edge + buttons) to add another plot or map beside it
- Resize by dragging the dividers; close a panel with its ✕
- On a vertical / mobile screen the built-in views automatically re-flow so plots sit on top and the maps share a row beneath
Views
The View bar rebuilds the whole workspace in one click:
| View | What you get |
|---|---|
| Classic | A single plot with the globe and 3D track (the default) |
| Map | Globe + 3D view side by side, no plot |
| Overview | Globe + 3D alongside the headline plots |
| Dashboard | Globe + 3D + the six core plots, each with a depth-profile sidebar |
| Duo | Two globes (chlorophyll + currents overlays) beside backscatter and salinity plots |
| Bio-optics | Temperature, chlorophyll, backscatter and PAR plots with a full-height globe |
| Stats | Deployment summary, map, instruments, and searchable variable / attribute tables (derived variables are labelled) |
Presets
The Presets row sets what a plot shows: Phases, Thermal, T-S Diagram, Salinity, Density, Chlorophyll, Oxygen, Backscatter, PAR. Each picks sensible X/Y/Colour variables and a matching palette; presets the current file has no data for are greyed out.
Globe & Overlays
- Globe — the glider's GPS track on an interactive 3D globe, with every other loaded deployment shown faintly alongside
- Copernicus overlays — drape satellite/model surface fields over the globe: Chlorophyll-a, Temperature, Salinity, O₂, pH, Biomass, Sea Level Anomaly. Layers are fetched in the background once per file, so a click is instant; buttons stay greyed out until their layer is ready. Smooth toggles interpolation of the overlay grid
- Surface currents — an animated particle-flow field of Copernicus surface currents
- Glider DAC — per-dive depth-averaged current vectors, shown when the file provides them
- Argo floats (experimental) — latest position of every Argo float, with details on click
- Research ships (experimental) — latest reported positions of RRS Discovery, RRS James Cook and RRS Sir David Attenborough
3D View
The dive track drawn in 3D over NOAA bathymetry (vertical scale ×100 by default).
- Playback — press play (or drag the slider) to fly the vehicle along its track, at a choice of speeds
- Style menu:
- Colour land — shade land and ice above the waterline
- True height — drop the ×100 vertical exaggeration
- Scenery — depth-shaded seabed plus decorative, region-appropriate sea life (whales, fish, kelp, corals…). Purely cosmetic
- Argo floats — show floats that surfaced near the glider during playback
- Gliders, autosubs (ALR) and other platforms get their own low-poly model
Copernicus Setup
The surface overlays and currents are fetched live from Copernicus Marine, which needs a (free) account and a one-time login:
- Register for a free account at marine.copernicus.eu/register.
- Install the toolbox:
pip install copernicusmarine
- Log in (stores your credentials locally), then restart Glider Playground:
copernicusmarine login
Once you're logged in, the overlay layers fetch on demand. Until then the app will prompt you with whichever of these steps is missing.
Citing Copernicus data
Overlays and currents are derived from Copernicus Marine products, so anything you publish from them should carry the credit line the licence asks for (the map shows it whenever a layer is on):
Generated using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information; DOI links below
| Layer | Product | DOI |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature, Salinity, Currents | Global Ocean Physics Analysis and Forecast | 10.48670/moi-00016 |
| O₂, pH, Biomass | Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Analysis and Forecast | 10.48670/moi-00015 |
| Chlorophyll-a | Global Ocean Colour L4 (NRT / Multi-Year) | 10.48670/moi-00279 / 10.48670/moi-00281 |
| Sea Level Anomaly (SLA) | Global Ocean Sea Level L4 (NRT / Multi-Year) | 10.48670/moi-00149 / 10.48670/moi-00148 |
For a paper, Copernicus recommends "Product Title. E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information (CMEMS). Marine Data Store (MDS). DOI: 10.48670/moi-xxxxx (Accessed on DD MMM YYYY)".
Plotting & Inspecting
By default, presets drive the plots. Open Settings (top bar) to take manual control — it reveals the X, Y, and Colour variable pickers, plus draw order, point size, quality, palette, QC, phases and profile controls.
- Box zoom — click and drag on the plot; double-click to reset
- Axis sliders — trim the X, Y, or colour range precisely (Auto / Reset beside the colour bar)
- Inspector — hover the plot to read exact values for the nearest sample in a floating card
- Profile sidebar — the Profile button adds a value-vs-depth plot to the left of a plot
- Order / Size / Quality — choose which points draw on top, marker size, and the maximum number of points drawn
- Colour palette — pick from a range of oceanographic colour maps
- Phases — show only selected glider phases
- Sync time — zooming one timeseries zooms every open plot
- Share — copy a link that reopens this exact view
- Download — save the current plot as a PNG
- Dark theme — toggle from the top bar
Profiles
If a file contains dive profiles, a Profiles navigator appears. Step through individual profiles or cycles, filter by direction (upcast / downcast / transect), or view everything at once.
Quality Control (Settings)
QC flags follow the Argo convention: 0 No QC, 1 Good, 2 Probably good, 3 Probably bad, 4 Bad, 5 Changed, 8 Interpolated, 9 Missing. Samples are always filtered to the allowed set (default 0,1,2,5,8) — click a QC chip to show only that flag, click again to restore all.
There's no separate Filter Time / Interpolate / Clean toggle — that processing always runs, and the QC chips are the only control:
- PRES gaps up to 5 minutes are always interpolated (flag
8); a longer gap is a real data gap and is left unfilled. - Exact
0.0fill values in PRES/TEMP/CNDC are always flagged missing (flag9) and nulled. - NaT and out-of-order timestamps are always dropped outright (not flag-gated — they aren't meaningful data). Other out-of-range timestamps (pre-1990 / future) are flagged bad (flag
4) and filterable like anything else.
Jelly — Notifications
Jelly is a passive notification icon in the top bar, next to Settings. It stays hidden until there's something worth showing — a new release, or Copernicus overlay setup help — then reveals itself with a dot and lists the notes.
Uninstall
pip uninstall glider-playground
Developer Docs
To change the default plots, dashboard views or colour palettes, edit glider_playground/plot_presets.json (instructions are at the top of the file) and restart.
See OVERVIEW.md for the code layout, architecture, data pipeline, and deployment.
License
Licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Developed by Orlando Prugel-Bennett at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
© 2026 National Oceanography Centre.
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for glider-playground 0.2.97
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| glider_playground-0.2.97.tar.gz | 2.9 MB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| glider_playground-0.2.97-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 5.8 MB
Release files / glider_playground-0.2.97.tar.gz
| Download URL | glider_playground-0.2.97.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 2.9 MB |
| Tags | Source |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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No |
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twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14
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Release files / glider_playground-0.2.97-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | glider_playground-0.2.97-py3-none-any.whl |
|---|---|
| Size | 2.9 MB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
|
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums |
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twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14
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