Open a SBET file format in GIS software

Question

After a LiDAR flight, we can get a file containing the airplane trajectory in SBET format - Smoothed Best Estimate of Trajectory.

Is it possible to open it in a GIS software like QGIS or ArcGIS?

If not, is there a way to convert it into a readable file?

If you are open to using python, I was able to use this python script with a little modification to read SBET/SOL files. I created an ArcGIS python tool and added the option to convert the SBET positions to 3D point at a user defined interval (i.e. 1 second). — Barbarossa, Commented Dec 27, 2015 at 22:24
@Barbarossa The Python script you have linked to has been moved and is now available from github.com/pmlrsg/arsf_tools (read_nav_file.py). — danclewley, Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 15:47

matt wilkie · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-28 21:22:45Z

7

PDAL has an SBET reader (and a writer too) that you could use to convert the file into text and then on to most other formats.

pdal translate myfile.sbet output.txt

When working with Lat/Lon default precision is not enough, so use:

pdal translate myfile.sbet output.txt -w writers.text --writers.text.precision=5

It is a very simple format. See the PDAL source code for more detail on what's in there.

matt wilkie

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answered Dec 28, 2015 at 2:36

Howard Butler

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Great @Howard Butler! As far as I saw, the PDAL is available to windows via trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w (just for 64bit version). Thanks.
– Gorgens
Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 10:37
1

The default precision for the translate command is not enough when working with Lat/Lon. I would use pdal translate mysbet.sbet mytext.txt -w writers.text --writers.text.precision=5
– miln40
Commented Oct 18, 2019 at 11:49
1

Also, pdal is now available with the Anaconda package.
– miln40
Commented Oct 22, 2019 at 9:13

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