Ask for help to run the code successfully

[HarDLy-nnu]

My goal is to process NEON's waveform data with pywaves and perform further analysis. I created a main.py to call base.py according to the guidance in readme. The base.py has not been modified. The code of main.py is as follows:

import base as pw
pulsewave = pw.openPLS(r"D:\...\NEON_D01_HARV_DP1_L001-1_2019081112_1.pls")
wave = pulsewave.get_waves(0)
wave.plot()

But then I received the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\...\pypwaves\main.py", line 4, in <module>
    pulsewave = pw.openPLS(r"D:\...\NEON_D01_HARV_DP1_L001-1_2019081112_1.pls")
  File "D:\...\pypwaves\base.py", line 211, in openPLS
    return PulseWaves(filename)
  File "D:\...\pypwaves\base.py", line 20, in __init__
    self.file_sig = "".join(struct.unpack("c"*16, pulsebinary.read(16))).strip("\x00")
TypeError: sequence item 0: expected str instance, bytes found

The pywaves has been tested with NEON's waveform lidar data, so I think it's my problem, but I have limited knowledge of python and can't solve this problem independently, I would be very grateful if anyone can help me with this problem.

[Rheinwalt]

I vaguely remember that I had a similar problem, basically because of a different Python version. Maybe you can test my fork at https://github.com/Rheinwalt/pulsewaves and report back?

[HarDLy-nnu]

I vaguely remember that I had a similar problem, basically because of a different Python version. Maybe you can test my fork at https://github.com/Rheinwalt/pulsewaves and report back?

Thank you very much for the code you provided, it runs successfully. I truly appreciate your help. I have an additional question, if you don't mind. Following your example, I plotted some waveform data as elevation vs. amplitude graph. However, I am not sure what the amplitude represents. Is it the echo intensity? Also, I noticed that it doesn't start from 0. In my example, the minimum value is around 200. Could you kindly explain why this is the case?

[HarDLy-nnu]

I vaguely remember that I had a similar problem, basically because of a different Python version. Maybe you can test my fork at https://github.com/Rheinwalt/pulsewaves and report back?

I hope you are doing well. Thanks for your help, I successfully read NEON's waveform data, and I also know why the amplitude is almost greater than 200, mainly because of noise. But recently I have encountered a bug. When I try to read a waveform of JERC in Line L006-1 in 2019, I received the following error:

  File "D:\...\pulsewaves-master\pulsewaves.py", line 84, in __init__
    vlr.record = f.read(vlr.record_length).decode("utf-8").strip("\x00")
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb1 in position 26: invalid start byte

But before that, I did use this code to read a waveform of HARV normally. I don't know how to debug or avoid this bug. Can you give me some help?