Descartes Labs Platform¶
The Descartes Labs Platform simplifies analysis of global-scale raster data by providing:
- Access to a catalog of petabytes of disparate geospatial data, all normalized and interoperable through one common interface
- Infrastructure to parallelize any code across thousands of machines co-located with that data
- The ability to add new data to that catalog—whether the output of analysis on existing data, or from a proprietary source—which can then be used as an input for more analysis
- Organize, upload, and query tabular data and vector geometries using the tables interface (alpha release)
- A Python client library to access these systems
- Web interfaces to browse this catalog and view imagery, including the data you create
Create an Account¶
This is a publicly installable package. However, if you want access to our full Platform and data catalog, you will need to create a Descartes Labs account and request access:
- Sign up at https://iam.descarteslabs.com/
- Send an email to your contact at Descartes Labs or visit our support portal to request access
Install the Python Client¶
If you plan to interact with the Platform programmatically, you should install the Python client and run a quick test to make sure everything’s working.
- Take a look at our best practices for managing your development environment
- Install the Python client
- Authenticate with the Platform and test the connection
- Familiarize yourself with our Python client
Note
At a minimum, we support the three most recent minor versions of the client. Each minor version is supported for up to a year. Currently the supported releases are:
1.12.1
(Feb 06, 2023)1.11.0
(Jul 20, 2022)1.10.0
(Jan 18, 2022)
We only support the latest patch release for any minor version.
How to Use These Docs¶
Our docs are broken up into several sections, in increasing level of detail:
- Examples demonstrate smaller pieces of functionality and are geared toward composability. We’re always adding to these examples, so let us know if there’s a topic you would like to see.
- Guides contain best practices and contain more context than Examples. If you’re wondering “How should I use Tasks?”, you should check out the Tasks Guide.
- Our API reference is there when you need to dig in to usage subtleties.
Support¶
Feel free to contact our Support Team at any time through our support portal
Status Page¶
If you are having intermittent issues with software functionality, check the Platform Status Page for the real-time status of known issues impacting Platform performance.