Native Mac reading/conversion of GRAMS/AI *.spc files

By jayhawkbabe at Wed, May 14 2008 5:28pm |

Does anyone know of a Mac application for reading GRAMS/AI data files (*.spc extension) and converting them to text/csv/etc format? Preferably, this program would have batch functionality as I am doing this for 1700 files per experiment (kinetics data).

I know that I can use the (Windows-only) GRAMS software, but I'd prefer to do this on my Mac and without having to transfer stuff back and forth between a virtual machine. (Using a VM produces some odd errors with the version of GRAMS our laboratory has.)

Thanks

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Thu, 2008-05-15 10:57 — jayhawkbabe

Found solution on MATLAB file exchange...

While continuing to work on my quest this morning, it occurred to me to search the wonderful MATLAB file exchange to see if anyone had written a Matlab function to deal with *.spc files. While not Mac-specific, I consider this an adequate solution to my problem and would realistically skip a few steps since the ultimate destination for my data will likely be Matlab anyway.

It turns out, that an entire toolkit has been posted for handling Grams files:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=9938&objectType=File

I would mention that, though the instructions claim the toolkit cannot handle multispectra Grams files, the "GSSpcRead" function was able to import my 1700-part multifile with no problem. The slightly more automated "GSImportspec" function cannot handle multifile spectra, unfortunately.

Cheers!

Tue, 2008-07-01 08:44 — DJ_GRAMS

GRAMS .SPC Header File and VM approach

Hi Jay,

I am the product manager for GRAMS/AI - unfortunately we don't have plans for a Mac Version any time soon - however we do have 'C' headers available which should allow you to write a Mac native viewer. I also beleive that OceanOptics SpectraSuite which runs in a Java environment can read SPC.
It may also be possible to wrap GRAMS in VMWare's http://www.vmware.com/whatsnew/thinstall.html - I have not had time to investigate this.

To get access to the header files go to http://www.thermo.com/grams and look for My Instrument and Software Components.

Approaching things another way you could simply use one of GRAMS export options to produce ASCII format files. This can be done in bulk using the File> Import/Export menu (or by calling the GRAMSC32.EXE grams convert application from a batch file).

I hope this helps.

Drop me a line or Join the GRAMS listserver to question more likeminded people.

All the best,

David