How much faster is PyQtGraph than Matplotlib? - matplotlib

I am trying to implement a GUI on a Raspberry Pi which plots real time data coming in from a TCP client with the functionality of panning and zooming as well. I have heard all the rage about PyQtGraph being faster than Matplotlib and would like to reimplement the Gui I'd previously made using Matplotlib and Gtk using PyQtGraph and PyQt5. I have benchmarked the code but would like clarification on the results seeing as I can blit the Matplotlib plot to dramatically reduce the plot time. Below is the code I used for benchmarking:
# PyQtGraph
import pyqtgraph as pg
import numpy as np
app = pg.mkQApp()
x = []
y = []
for i in range(1000000):
x.append(i)
y.append(1)
view = pg.GraphicsLayoutWidget()
view.show()
w1 = view.addPlot()
w1.disableAutoRange()
start = pg.ptime.time()
w1.plot(x, y)
w1.autoRange() # only after plots are added
end = pg.ptime.time()
print("Plot time: %0.2f sec" % (end-start))
app.exec_()
and
# Matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import time
x = []
y = []
for i in range(1000000):
x.append(i)
y.append(1)
fig, ax = plt.subplots(nrows=1)
(line,) = ax.plot([], [], "b")
plt.show(block=False)
start = time.time()
line.set_data(x, y)
ax.relim()
ax.autoscale_view(True,True,True)
fig.canvas.draw()
fig.canvas.flush_events()
end = time.time()
print(end-start)
# In order to see if it has plotted
time.sleep(10)
For 1 000 000 points, I got 2.54 s to plot using PyQtGraph and 6.97 s to plot using Matplotlib on my Raspberry Pi. Is this the expected speed up or is there something else I'm not doing? Thank you.

Related

Matplotlib video zooming and quality

I already figured out how to save a video animation and zooming a picture with matplotlib.
I want now to merge the two things and understand how to introduce zoom in an animation: reading some documentation I noticed it's not straightforward for just a picture, I expect to be the same or worse for a video.
In the following I write a simple working code, relating to that you can find on the first link
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.animation as animation
from matplotlib import cm
#Define x,y vectors and meshgrid with function u on it
x = np.arange(0,10,.1)
y = np.arange(0,10,.1)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,y)
#Create a figure and an axis object for the surface
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111,projection='3d')
#Animation without axes and with colormap
def animate(n):
ax.cla()
u = np.sin(X+Y+(n/10))
plt.axis('off')
plt.grid('off')
ax.plot_surface(X,Y,u,cmap=cm.inferno)
return fig,
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig,animate,frames=63)
anim.save('A.mp4',fps=20)
Here the output
As you can see is not bad zoomed, but it's not enough, I want it more!
In the actual code I'm using, video animations are very very small, and I don't know why because it's very similar to this. I hope also that this way I can increase video quality, that is quite poor.
Thanks for any help.
I finally got to a raw, but effective solution. The code almost doesn't change
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.animation as animation
from matplotlib import cm
#Define x,y vectors and meshgrid with function u on it
x = np.arange(0,10,.1)
y = np.arange(0,10,.1)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,y)
#Create a figure and an axis object for the surface
fig = plt.figure(frameon=False)
ax = fig.add_subplot(111,projection='3d')
#Definition? and zooming
fig.set_size_inches(10,10)
fig.subplots_adjust(left=0,right=1,bottom=0,top=1,wspace=None,hspace=None)
#Animation without axes and with colormap
def animate(n):
ax.cla()
u = np.sin(X+Y+(n/10))
plt.axis('off')
plt.grid('off')
ax.plot_surface(X,Y,u,cmap=cm.inferno)
print(n)
return fig,
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig,animate,frames=63)
anim.save('A.gif',fps=20)
As you can see the zooming is good.
The bad quality is due to compression I did in a second moment, because the actual output gif is quite heavy with those parameters, in fact the quality is very good.

How to draw graphics dynamically on jupyterlab notebook

I found an example that can run normally on my laptop, but there is a problem. When the drawing is finished, a repeated result graph will be drawn again. I want to know how to not display the last repeated image.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# set up matplotlib
is_ipython = 'inline' in matplotlib.get_backend()
if is_ipython:
from IPython import display
plt.ion()
def plot_durations(y):
plt.figure(2)
plt.clf()
plt.subplot(211)
plt.plot(y[:,0])
plt.subplot(212)
plt.plot(y[:,1])
if is_ipython:
display.clear_output(wait=True)
display.display(plt.gcf())
x = np.linspace(-10,10,10)
y = []
for i in range(len(x)):
y1 = np.cos(i/(3*3.14))
y2 = np.sin(i/(3*3.14))
y.append(np.array([y1,y2]))
plot_durations(np.array(y))
plt.ioff()
plt.show()
Replacing plt.show() with plt.close() at the end of your code will prevent jupyter notebook from displaying the final plot twice. An explanation is included here.

Embedding Matplotlib Animations in Python (google colab notebook)

I am trying to show a gif file in google's colab.research. I was able to save the file in the directory with the following path name /content/BrowniamMotion.gif but I don't know how to show this GIF in my notebook to present.
The code to generate the GIF so far, in case someone can manipulate it not to save the GIF but rather to animate it directly into the google colab file was,
# Other Brownian Motion
from math import *
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits import mplot3d
import matplotlib.animation as animation
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,6))
ax = plt.axes(projection='3d')
N=10
#val1 = 500
x=500*np.random.random(N)
y=500*np.random.random(N)
z=500*np.random.random(N)
def frame(w):
ax.clear()
global x,y,z
x=x+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
y=y+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
z=z+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
plt.title("Brownian Motion")
ax.set_xlabel('X(t)')
ax.set_xlim3d(-500.0,500.0)
ax.set_ylabel('Y(t)')
ax.set_ylim3d(-500.0,500.0)
ax.set_zlabel('Z(t)')
ax.set_zlim3d(-500.0,500.0)
plot=ax.scatter
3D(x, y, z, c='r')
return plot
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, frame, frames=100, blit=False, repeat=True)
anim.save('BrowniamMotion.gif', writer = "pillow", fps=10 )
Sorry if this question is badly, stated. I am new to Python and using colab research.
For Colab it is easiest to use 'jshtml' to display matplotlib animation.
You need to set it up with
from matplotlib import rc
rc('animation', html='jshtml')
Then, just type your animation object. It will display itself
anim
Here's a workable colab of your code.
It has a slider where you can run back and forth at any point in time.
Using the same authors git repository seems like we have a solution to embed the plots as GIFs ( Save Matplotlib Animations as GIFs ).
#!apt install ffmpeg
#!brew install imagemagick
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import animation, rc
from IPython.display import HTML, Image # For GIF
rc('animation', html='html5')
np.random.seed(5)
# Set up formatting for the movie files
Writer = animation.writers['ffmpeg']
writer = Writer(fps=15, metadata=dict(artist='Me'), bitrate=1800)
def generateRandomLines(dt, N):
dX = np.sqrt(dt) * np.random.randn(1, N)
X = np.cumsum(dX, axis=1)
dY = np.sqrt(dt) * np.random.randn(1, N)
Y = np.cumsum(dY, axis=1)
lineData = np.vstack((X, Y))
return lineData
# Returns Line2D objects
def updateLines(num, dataLines, lines):
for u, v in zip(lines, dataLines):
u.set_data(v[0:2, :num])
return lines
N = 501 # Number of points
T = 1.0
dt = T/(N-1)
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
data = [generateRandomLines(dt, N)]
ax = plt.axes(xlim=(-2.0, 2.0), ylim=(-2.0, 2.0))
ax.set_xlabel('X(t)')
ax.set_ylabel('Y(t)')
ax.set_title('2D Discretized Brownian Paths')
## Create a list of line2D objects
lines = [ax.plot(dat[0, 0:1], dat[1, 0:1])[0] for dat in data]
## Create the animation object
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, updateLines, N+1, fargs=(data, lines), interval=30, repeat=True, blit=False)
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()
# Save as GIF
anim.save('animationBrownianMotion2d.gif', writer='pillow', fps=60)
Image(url='animationBrownianMotion2d.gif')
## Uncomment to save the animation
#anim.save('brownian2d_1path.mp4', writer=writer)
Check this link out on using the HTML to get it to work http://louistiao.me/posts/notebooks/embedding-matplotlib-animations-in-jupyter-notebooks/ .
I didn't embed a link but instead imbedded a HTML video that got it to work.
# Other Brownian Motion
from math import *
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits import mplot3d
import matplotlib.animation as animation
from IPython.display import HTML
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,6))
ax = plt.axes(projection='3d')
N=10
val1 = 600
x=val1*np.random.random(N)
y=val1*np.random.random(N)
z=val1*np.random.random(N)
def frame(w):
ax.clear()
global x,y,z
x=x+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
y=y+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
z=z+np.random.normal(loc=0.0,scale=50.0,size=10)
plt.title("Brownian Motion")
ax.set_xlabel('X(t)')
ax.set_xlim3d(-val1,val1)
ax.set_ylabel('Y(t)')
ax.set_ylim3d(-val1,val1)
ax.set_zlabel('Z(t)')
ax.set_zlim3d(-val1,val1)
plot=ax.scatter3D(x, y, z, c='r')
return plot
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, frame, frames=100, blit=False, repeat=True)
anim.save('BrowniamMotion.gif', writer = "pillow", fps=10 )
HTML(anim.to_html5_video())
Essentially all we did hear was add,
from IPython.display import HTML to the premable and then add the line HTML(anim.to_html5_video()). This code then produces a video and saves the gif.

matplotlib update figure in loop [duplicate]

I'm having issues with redrawing the figure here. I allow the user to specify the units in the time scale (x-axis) and then I recalculate and call this function plots(). I want the plot to simply update, not append another plot to the figure.
def plots():
global vlgaBuffSorted
cntr()
result = collections.defaultdict(list)
for d in vlgaBuffSorted:
result[d['event']].append(d)
result_list = result.values()
f = Figure()
graph1 = f.add_subplot(211)
graph2 = f.add_subplot(212,sharex=graph1)
for item in result_list:
tL = []
vgsL = []
vdsL = []
isubL = []
for dict in item:
tL.append(dict['time'])
vgsL.append(dict['vgs'])
vdsL.append(dict['vds'])
isubL.append(dict['isub'])
graph1.plot(tL,vdsL,'bo',label='a')
graph1.plot(tL,vgsL,'rp',label='b')
graph2.plot(tL,isubL,'b-',label='c')
plotCanvas = FigureCanvasTkAgg(f, pltFrame)
toolbar = NavigationToolbar2TkAgg(plotCanvas, pltFrame)
toolbar.pack(side=BOTTOM)
plotCanvas.get_tk_widget().pack(side=TOP)
You essentially have two options:
Do exactly what you're currently doing, but call graph1.clear() and graph2.clear() before replotting the data. This is the slowest, but most simplest and most robust option.
Instead of replotting, you can just update the data of the plot objects. You'll need to make some changes in your code, but this should be much, much faster than replotting things every time. However, the shape of the data that you're plotting can't change, and if the range of your data is changing, you'll need to manually reset the x and y axis limits.
To give an example of the second option:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = np.linspace(0, 6*np.pi, 100)
y = np.sin(x)
# You probably won't need this if you're embedding things in a tkinter plot...
plt.ion()
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
line1, = ax.plot(x, y, 'r-') # Returns a tuple of line objects, thus the comma
for phase in np.linspace(0, 10*np.pi, 500):
line1.set_ydata(np.sin(x + phase))
fig.canvas.draw()
fig.canvas.flush_events()
You can also do like the following:
This will draw a 10x1 random matrix data on the plot for 50 cycles of the for loop.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
plt.ion()
for i in range(50):
y = np.random.random([10,1])
plt.plot(y)
plt.draw()
plt.pause(0.0001)
plt.clf()
This worked for me. Repeatedly calls a function updating the graph every time.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as anim
def plot_cont(fun, xmax):
y = []
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)
def update(i):
yi = fun()
y.append(yi)
x = range(len(y))
ax.clear()
ax.plot(x, y)
print i, ': ', yi
a = anim.FuncAnimation(fig, update, frames=xmax, repeat=False)
plt.show()
"fun" is a function that returns an integer.
FuncAnimation will repeatedly call "update", it will do that "xmax" times.
This worked for me:
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from IPython.display import clear_output
import numpy as np
for i in range(50):
clear_output(wait=True)
y = np.random.random([10,1])
plt.plot(y)
plt.show()
I have released a package called python-drawnow that provides functionality to let a figure update, typically called within a for loop, similar to Matlab's drawnow.
An example usage:
from pylab import figure, plot, ion, linspace, arange, sin, pi
def draw_fig():
# can be arbitrarily complex; just to draw a figure
#figure() # don't call!
plot(t, x)
#show() # don't call!
N = 1e3
figure() # call here instead!
ion() # enable interactivity
t = linspace(0, 2*pi, num=N)
for i in arange(100):
x = sin(2 * pi * i**2 * t / 100.0)
drawnow(draw_fig)
This package works with any matplotlib figure and provides options to wait after each figure update or drop into the debugger.
In case anyone comes across this article looking for what I was looking for, I found examples at
How to visualize scalar 2D data with Matplotlib?
and
http://mri.brechmos.org/2009/07/automatically-update-a-figure-in-a-loop
(on web.archive.org)
then modified them to use imshow with an input stack of frames, instead of generating and using contours on the fly.
Starting with a 3D array of images of shape (nBins, nBins, nBins), called frames.
def animate_frames(frames):
nBins = frames.shape[0]
frame = frames[0]
tempCS1 = plt.imshow(frame, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
for k in range(nBins):
frame = frames[k]
tempCS1 = plt.imshow(frame, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
del tempCS1
fig.canvas.draw()
#time.sleep(1e-2) #unnecessary, but useful
fig.clf()
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
win = fig.canvas.manager.window
fig.canvas.manager.window.after(100, animate_frames, frames)
I also found a much simpler way to go about this whole process, albeit less robust:
fig = plt.figure()
for k in range(nBins):
plt.clf()
plt.imshow(frames[k],cmap=plt.cm.gray)
fig.canvas.draw()
time.sleep(1e-6) #unnecessary, but useful
Note that both of these only seem to work with ipython --pylab=tk, a.k.a.backend = TkAgg
Thank you for the help with everything.
All of the above might be true, however for me "online-updating" of figures only works with some backends, specifically wx. You just might try to change to this, e.g. by starting ipython/pylab by ipython --pylab=wx! Good luck!
Based on the other answers, I wrapped the figure's update in a python decorator to separate the plot's update mechanism from the actual plot. This way, it is much easier to update any plot.
def plotlive(func):
plt.ion()
#functools.wraps(func)
def new_func(*args, **kwargs):
# Clear all axes in the current figure.
axes = plt.gcf().get_axes()
for axis in axes:
axis.cla()
# Call func to plot something
result = func(*args, **kwargs)
# Draw the plot
plt.draw()
plt.pause(0.01)
return result
return new_func
Usage example
And then you can use it like any other decorator.
#plotlive
def plot_something_live(ax, x, y):
ax.plot(x, y)
ax.set_ylim([0, 100])
The only constraint is that you have to create the figure before the loop:
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
for i in range(100):
x = np.arange(100)
y = np.full([100], fill_value=i)
plot_something_live(ax, x, y)

Fast Live Plotting in Matplotlib / PyPlot

For years, I've been struggling to get efficient live plotting in matplotlib, and to this day I remain unsatisfied.
I want a redraw_figure function that updates the figure "live" (as the code runs), and will display the latest plots if I stop at a breakpoint.
Here is some demo code:
import time
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def live_update_demo():
plt.subplot(2, 1, 1)
h1 = plt.imshow(np.random.randn(30, 30))
redraw_figure()
plt.subplot(2, 1, 2)
h2, = plt.plot(np.random.randn(50))
redraw_figure()
t_start = time.time()
for i in xrange(1000):
h1.set_data(np.random.randn(30, 30))
redraw_figure()
h2.set_ydata(np.random.randn(50))
redraw_figure()
print 'Mean Frame Rate: %.3gFPS' % ((i+1) / (time.time() - t_start))
def redraw_figure():
plt.draw()
plt.pause(0.00001)
live_update_demo()
Plots should update live when the code is run, and we should see the latest data when stopping at any breakpoint after redraw_figure(). The question is how to best implement redraw_figure()
In the implementation above (plt.draw(); plt.pause(0.00001)), it works, but is very slow (~3.7FPS)
I can implement it as:
def redraw_figure():
plt.gcf().canvas.flush_events()
plt.show(block=False)
And it runs faster (~11FPS), but plots are not up-to date when you stop at breakpoints (eg if I put a breakpoint on the t_start = ... line, the second plot does not appear).
Strangely enough, what does actually work is calling the show twice:
def redraw_figure():
plt.gcf().canvas.flush_events()
plt.show(block=False)
plt.show(block=False)
Which gives ~11FPS and does keep plots up-to-data if your break on any line.
Now I've heard it said that the "block" keyword is deprecated. And calling the same function twice seems like a weird, probably-non-portable hack anyway.
So what can I put in this function that will plot at a reasonable frame rate, isn't a giant kludge, and preferably will work across backends and systems?
Some notes:
I'm on OSX, and using TkAgg backend, but solutions on any backend/system are welcome
Interactive mode "On" will not work, because it does not update live. It just updates when in the Python console when the interpreter waits for user input.
A blog suggested the implementation:
def redraw_figure():
fig = plt.gcf()
fig.canvas.draw()
fig.canvas.flush_events()
But at least on my system, that does not redraw the plots at all.
So, if anybody has an answer, you would directly make me and thousands of others very happy. Their happiness would probably trickle through to their friends and relatives, and their friends and relatives, and so on, so that you could potentially improve the lives of billions.
Conclusions
ImportanceOfBeingErnest shows how you can use blit for faster plotting, but it's not as simple as putting something different in the redraw_figure function (you need to keep track of what things to redraw).
First of all, the code that is posted in the question runs with 7 fps on my machine, with QT4Agg as backend.
Now, as has been suggested in many posts, like here or here, using blit might be an option. Although this article mentions that blit causes strong memory leakage, I could not observe that.
I have modified your code a bit and compared the frame rate with and without the use of blit. The code below gives
28 fps when run without blit
175 fps with blit
Code:
import time
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
def live_update_demo(blit = False):
x = np.linspace(0,50., num=100)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,x)
fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(2, 1, 1)
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(2, 1, 2)
img = ax1.imshow(X, vmin=-1, vmax=1, interpolation="None", cmap="RdBu")
line, = ax2.plot([], lw=3)
text = ax2.text(0.8,0.5, "")
ax2.set_xlim(x.min(), x.max())
ax2.set_ylim([-1.1, 1.1])
fig.canvas.draw() # note that the first draw comes before setting data
if blit:
# cache the background
axbackground = fig.canvas.copy_from_bbox(ax1.bbox)
ax2background = fig.canvas.copy_from_bbox(ax2.bbox)
plt.show(block=False)
t_start = time.time()
k=0.
for i in np.arange(1000):
img.set_data(np.sin(X/3.+k)*np.cos(Y/3.+k))
line.set_data(x, np.sin(x/3.+k))
tx = 'Mean Frame Rate:\n {fps:.3f}FPS'.format(fps= ((i+1) / (time.time() - t_start)) )
text.set_text(tx)
#print tx
k+=0.11
if blit:
# restore background
fig.canvas.restore_region(axbackground)
fig.canvas.restore_region(ax2background)
# redraw just the points
ax1.draw_artist(img)
ax2.draw_artist(line)
ax2.draw_artist(text)
# fill in the axes rectangle
fig.canvas.blit(ax1.bbox)
fig.canvas.blit(ax2.bbox)
# in this post http://bastibe.de/2013-05-30-speeding-up-matplotlib.html
# it is mentionned that blit causes strong memory leakage.
# however, I did not observe that.
else:
# redraw everything
fig.canvas.draw()
fig.canvas.flush_events()
#alternatively you could use
#plt.pause(0.000000000001)
# however plt.pause calls canvas.draw(), as can be read here:
#http://bastibe.de/2013-05-30-speeding-up-matplotlib.html
live_update_demo(True) # 175 fps
#live_update_demo(False) # 28 fps
Update:
For faster plotting, one may consider using pyqtgraph.
As the pyqtgraph documentation puts it: "For plotting, pyqtgraph is not nearly as complete/mature as matplotlib, but runs much faster."
I ported the above example to pyqtgraph. And although it looks kind of ugly, it runs with 250 fps on my machine.
Summing that up,
matplotlib (without blitting): 28 fps
matplotlib (with blitting): 175 fps
pyqtgraph : 250 fps
pyqtgraph code:
import sys
import time
from pyqtgraph.Qt import QtCore, QtGui
import numpy as np
import pyqtgraph as pg
class App(QtGui.QMainWindow):
def __init__(self, parent=None):
super(App, self).__init__(parent)
#### Create Gui Elements ###########
self.mainbox = QtGui.QWidget()
self.setCentralWidget(self.mainbox)
self.mainbox.setLayout(QtGui.QVBoxLayout())
self.canvas = pg.GraphicsLayoutWidget()
self.mainbox.layout().addWidget(self.canvas)
self.label = QtGui.QLabel()
self.mainbox.layout().addWidget(self.label)
self.view = self.canvas.addViewBox()
self.view.setAspectLocked(True)
self.view.setRange(QtCore.QRectF(0,0, 100, 100))
# image plot
self.img = pg.ImageItem(border='w')
self.view.addItem(self.img)
self.canvas.nextRow()
# line plot
self.otherplot = self.canvas.addPlot()
self.h2 = self.otherplot.plot(pen='y')
#### Set Data #####################
self.x = np.linspace(0,50., num=100)
self.X,self.Y = np.meshgrid(self.x,self.x)
self.counter = 0
self.fps = 0.
self.lastupdate = time.time()
#### Start #####################
self._update()
def _update(self):
self.data = np.sin(self.X/3.+self.counter/9.)*np.cos(self.Y/3.+self.counter/9.)
self.ydata = np.sin(self.x/3.+ self.counter/9.)
self.img.setImage(self.data)
self.h2.setData(self.ydata)
now = time.time()
dt = (now-self.lastupdate)
if dt <= 0:
dt = 0.000000000001
fps2 = 1.0 / dt
self.lastupdate = now
self.fps = self.fps * 0.9 + fps2 * 0.1
tx = 'Mean Frame Rate: {fps:.3f} FPS'.format(fps=self.fps )
self.label.setText(tx)
QtCore.QTimer.singleShot(1, self._update)
self.counter += 1
if __name__ == '__main__':
app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
thisapp = App()
thisapp.show()
sys.exit(app.exec_())
Here's one way to do live plotting: get the plot as an image array then draw the image to a multithreaded screen.
Example using a pyformulas screen (~30 FPS):
import pyformulas as pf
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import time
fig = plt.figure()
screen = pf.screen(title='Plot')
start = time.time()
for i in range(10000):
t = time.time() - start
x = np.linspace(t-3, t, 100)
y = np.sin(2*np.pi*x) + np.sin(3*np.pi*x)
plt.xlim(t-3,t)
plt.ylim(-3,3)
plt.plot(x, y, c='black')
# If we haven't already shown or saved the plot, then we need to draw the figure first...
fig.canvas.draw()
image = np.fromstring(fig.canvas.tostring_rgb(), dtype=np.uint8, sep='')
image = image.reshape(fig.canvas.get_width_height()[::-1] + (3,))
screen.update(image)
#screen.close()
Disclaimer: I'm the maintainer of pyformulas