AltarSender
Application to send (meta)data stored in local folders to a database where they can be organized and visualized.
Find Your Path
Get a personalized list of resources based on your role and goals
- Research Student (PhD/Postdoc/Masters)
- Data Scientist
- Data Engineer
- Project Manager
- Principal Investigator
- Lab Administrator
- DevOps/SysAdmin (VM deployment)
- Upload experiments to a database
- Upload simulations to a database
- Upload data from lab instruments
- Browse and analyze existing experiments
- Write a Data Management Plan (DMP)
- Deploy Altar on lab servers / cloud
- Provide (secured) online access to a database
- Backup / migrate a database (eg. local to server)
- Apps and web interfaces
- Writing Python scripts
- Detailed explanations
- Quick explanations
Why FAIR?
Altar helps you implement FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) for your experimental research:
- Findable: Search and filter experiments by any parameter, making data discovery effortless
- Accessible: Web interfaces and APIs provide multiple access points to your data
- Interoperable: Standard formats (Sacred, MongoDB, MinIO) ensure compatibility with other tools
- Reusable: Complete metadata and provenance tracking enables reproducibility and reanalysis
By centralizing your data in structured databases with proper metadata, Altar makes your research more transparent, reproducible, and valuable to the scientific community.
What you can do
Tools overview
AltarViewer
Desktop app to connect to MongoDB, select a database, and launch Omniboard in Docker for experiment visualization.
AltarExtractor
Application to explore the database, filter experiments, visualise data and export datasets.
Requirement to run Altar
AltarDocker
Docker Compose stack for MongoDB, MinIO, Omniboard, and AltarExtractor for local/dev.
What is Docker? Docker is like a virtual container that packages all the software Altar needs to run. Think of it as a complete workspace that works the same way on any computer — whether you're on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Why it helps: Instead of manually installing and configuring multiple programs (databases, servers, etc.), Docker does it all automatically in one command. This means less technical setup for you, and more time for your research.
Install Docker Desktop here (free for personal use).
Quick start for developers
1
Install Docker Desktop
Download and install Docker Desktop (free for personal use). Make sure it's running before proceeding.
2
Clone the repository
Download the ZIP or use git clone https://github.com/DreamRepo/Altar.git --recurse-submodules
3
Run the local stack
Go to AltarDocker, edit .env, then docker compose up -d. This sets up MongoDB (database) and MinIO (storage for large files).
4
Send experiments
Use AltarSender to map folders and push runs to Sacred and files to MinIO.
5
Visualize database content
Browse and filter experiments with Omniboard using AltarViewer
6
Visualise data and export datasets
Use AltarExtractor to interact with data using Pygwalker and download datasets as CSV.
Quick start for non-coders
1
Install Docker Desktop
Download and install Docker Desktop (free for personal use). Open it and wait until it shows 'Engine running'.
2
Download and set up Altar
Follow the quickstart guide to download Altar and launch MongoDB and MinIO using Docker Desktop's interface — no command line needed!
3
Send your experiments
Download the latest AltarSender release and run it to upload your experiment folders to the database with a simple point-and-click interface.
4
View your data
Download the latest AltarViewer release and run it to browse your experiments in a web dashboard — run the app, enter the port and click Connect.
5
Explore and export data (optional)
Follow the AltarExtractor guide to run it with Docker. Open localhost:8050 to filter experiments, visualize data, and export as CSV.