What can PMbrowser do for you?

It can open bundled data files (.dat) created by PATCHMASTER or PATCHMASTER NEXT.

It has been tested with files created by versions of PATCHMASTER as old as v2.0, which is now more than 15 years old [1].

You can browse the traces stored in the data file and comfortably access all metadata, such as Rseries, Rmem, Vhold, Amplifier state… You can select which metadata is relevant to you and should be extracted.

The second major function of PMbrowser is the export of data (and also metadata) for use in IgorPro or Python/numpy scripts. Also export as generic raw binary data is supported.

Features for export to IgorPro:

Traces can be exported either as individual Igor binary waves (ibw-files) or several traces can be bundled into a packaged experiment (pxp-file).

In case of export to pxp-files, you can choose to have a folder hierachy created in the experiment that matches the structure (Experiment/Group, Series) in which the data was stored in the Patchmaster file.

Metadata will be exported as wave-notes, so you will have all relevant metadata available in IgorPro.

Features for export to Python:

Traces are exported in npy format. These can be read with the numpy.load() method of the numpy package.

Metadata will be exported in JSON format.

Is PMbrowser free?

PMbrowser is open-source software. It is licensed under GPLv3. You can use it freely. The source code can be found here.

Footnotes

[1]

Note that PATCHMASTER NEXT, which is the only variant under active developement by HEKA, cannot read data files created by old versions of PATCHMASTER. One intention for the creation of PMbrowser was to provide support for reading these old data files for users who now use PATCHMASTER NEXT.