Reading LabVIEW TDMS files with R

Question

As part of a transition from MATLAB to R, I am trying to figure out how to read TDMS files created with National Instruments LabVIEW using R. TDMS is a fairly complex binary file format (http://www.ni.com/white-paper/5696/en/).

Add-ons exist for excel and open-office (http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3727/en/), and I could make something in LabVIEW to make the conversion, but I am looking for a solution that would let me read the TDMS files directly into R. This would allow us to test out the use of R for certain data processing requirements without changing what we do earlier in the data acquisition process. Having a simple process would also reduce the barriers to others trying out R for this purpose.

Does anyone have any experience with reading TDMS files directly into R, that they could share?

Answer 1

This is far from supporting all TDMS specifications but I started a port of a python npTDMS package into R here https://github.com/msuefishlab/tdmsreader and it has been tested out in the context of a shiny app here