Develop Reference

Python/Tkinter: trying to sample a signal and run a timer simultaneously: program freezes. Why?

As mentioned in the title, I am trying to run a timer, updating every second, while sampling a signal (for Raspberry Pi), currently simulating on PC.
The code for the timer works very well by itself, here it comes:
def update_timer(self, nap = 1):
while (self.sw_seconds > 0):
self.sw_seconds -= nap
m, s = divmod(self.sw_seconds, 60)
self.labels["Timer"]['text'] = '%02d:%02d' % (int(m), int(s))
self.labels["Timer"].after(1000, self.update_timer)
Now, the function I use to run simultaneously is:
def repeat_function(self,period,f,*args):
t = time.time()
while self.bool:
f(*args)
t += period
time.sleep(max(t - time.time(),0))
The overall program is lengthy and has been tested to work before calling the repeat_function, but I can fully copy it here if required. Just trying to be concise.
I have tested this configuration by launching the timer (which works by itself) and repeat_function(1.0,print,"Hi there\n"). My program freezes and I have to kill it every time.
Can anyone tell me what is wrong with the "repeat function"? In real life, it will have to capture a signal sample with a frequency of 10 Hz at least, so I cannot imagine this how this can work when it freezes already when asked to print a statement every second

Thank you, indeed, sleep (put the whole app to sleep) is the wrong tool for the job, with Threading it works well.

Duration calculation and control in ROS - furthermore why does this script keep running even after pressing Ctrl-C?

I have written some code to make the turtlebot turn around. The code is working. What I want to know is how fast the turtlebot is running and how I can control it. Forexample, how can I ensure that the turtlebot turns 5 degrees in one minute?
Last part of the question. After pressing Ctrl-C, the turtlebot stops but the script keeps running. Why? and how can I stop that?
this post does not really help.
went through this post .Does that mean that the while loop below runs 5 times a second regardless of the values I put in the for loops? Or does it mean ROS tries its best to make sure that the loop runs 5 times a second to the best of my machine's ability?
Thank you very much.
# 5 HZ
angle = 5
r = rospy.Rate(5);
while not rospy.is_shutdown():
# code to turn
for x in range(0,100):
rospy.loginfo("turn")
turn_cmd.angular.z = radians(angle)
new_angle = (angle + new_angle) % 360
self.cmd_vel.publish(turn_cmd)
r.sleep()
# code to pause
for x in range(0,100):
rospy.loginfo("stop")
turn_cmd.angular.z = radians(0)
self.cmd_vel.publish(turn_cmd)
r.sleep()
def shutdown(self):
# stop turtlebot
rospy.loginfo("Stop turning")
self.cmd_vel.publish(Twist())
rospy.sleep(1)

According to ROS Wiki, the rospy.Rate convenience class makes a best effort to maintain the loop running at the specified frequency by considering the execution time of the loop since the last successful r.sleep(). This means in your case: as long as the code execution time within the loop does not exceed 1/5 seconds, rospy.Rate will make sure the loop runs at 5Hz.
Regarding the script not stopping when pressing Ctrl-C:
KeyboardInterrupt will be handled differently than in normal Python scripts when using rospy.
rospy catches the KeyboardInterrupt signal to set the rospy.is_shutdown() flag to true. This flag is only checked at the end of each loop, therefore if pressing Ctrl-C during the for-loop executions, the script cannot be stopped because the flag is not checked immediately.
A manual way to signal a shutdown of the node is to use rospy.signal_shutdown(). For this, the disable_signals option needs to be set to true when initializing the ROS node (see Section 2.3 here). Note that you will additionally have to manually invoke the correct shutdown routines to ensure a proper cleanup.

Tkinter - Creating a responsive GUI with a progressbar

Using PyGubu (tool to create Tkinter interfaces) I obtained the following GUI:
Current situation:
When I click the Button "Create", a function is called. This function takes quite some time, and the graphical interfaces is just frozen. As I would like to keep the graphical interface and the functional part as much separated as possible, I don't want to update the Progress Bar or the interface in general from the function I call
Desired situation
The best case for me would be a solution without Threading: I would like, upon clicking "Create", that my function runs, while the Progress Bar updates itself (just to show a feedback to the user, and to tell him "look, I am doing something") and the interface remains responsive, so the user can actually interact with it while the function finish.
Current attempts
I tried to solve this using Threading:
#I have this code in my main.py:
from threading import Thread
from queue import Queue, Empty
my_queue=Queue()
#And this is a simplified version of the Command of the "Create" Button:
def create_command(self):
#Show the progress bar and start it
self.show_item(self.progress)
self.progress.start()
#Run the big function
thrd = Thread(target = my_big_function, args=(some_arguments, my_queue))
thrd.start()
do_retry = True
while do_retry: #Repeat until you have a result
try:
result = my_queue.get(False) #If you have a result, exit loop. Else, throw Empty
do_retry = False
except Empty: #Queue is still empty
self.progress_var.set(self.progress_var.get()+1)
sleep(0.05)
self.mainwindow.update() #Update the progress bar
q.task_done()
self.progress.stop()
Problem of the current attempt
As I am not used to work with threads, I am facing two problems:
In some runs (not all of them, just some) I have a RuntimeError stating
RuntimeError: main thread is not in main loop
I tried to overcome this looking at other question in StackOverflow, but now it just happens randomly, and I don't know how to avoid it. The module mtTinker is no more maintained for python 3.x (there is a vague attempt full of ToDoes and blood)
If there is some kind of exception in the big function, I don't know how to handle it. The program would just run forever waiting for a result that will never come back
So
How can I obtain my desired outcome? Thanks in advance

You can try adding root.update() inside the function you call, inside the main loop. Hope that's helpful!

Add time delay between every statement of python code

Is there an easy way to execute time delay (like time.sleep(3)) between every statement of Python code without having to explicitly write between every statement?
Like in the below Python Script which performs certain action on SAP GUI window. Sometimes, the script continues to the next statement before the previous statement is complete. So, I had to add a time delay between every statement so that it executes correctly. It is working with time delay, but I end up adding time.sleep(3) between every line. Just wondering if there is a better way?
import win32com.client
import time
sapgui = win32com.client.GetObject("SAPGUI").GetScriptingEngine
session = sapgui.FindById("ses[0]")
def add_record(employee_num, start_date, comp_code):
try:
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/tbar[0]/okcd").text = "/npa40"
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]").sendVKey(0)
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/ctxtRP50G-PERNR").text = employee_num
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]").sendVKey(0)
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/ctxtRP50G-EINDA").text = start_date
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/tblSAPMP50ATC_MENU_EVENT/ctxtRP50G-WERKS[1,0]").text = comp_code
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/tblSAPMP50ATC_MENU_EVENT/ctxtRP50G-PERSG[2,0]").text = "1"
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/tblSAPMP50ATC_MENU_EVENT/ctxtRP50G-PERSK[3,0]").text = "U1"
time.sleep(3)
session.findById("wnd[0]/usr/tblSAPMP50ATC_MENU_EVENT").getAbsoluteRow(0).selected = True
time.sleep(3)
return "Pass"
except:
return "failed"

The right way to do what you asked for is almost certainly to use the debugger, pdb.
The right way to do what you want is probably something completely different: find some signal that tells you that the step is done, and wait for that signal. With problems like this, almost any time you pick will be way, way too long 99% of the time, but still too short 1% of the time. That signal may be joining a thread, or waiting on a (threading or multiprocessing) Condition, or getting from a queue, or awaiting a coroutine or future, or setting the sync flag on an AppleEvent, or… It really depends on what you're doing.
But if you really want to do this, you can use settrace:
def sleeper(frame, event, arg):
if event == 'line':
time.sleep(2)
return sleeper
sys.settrace(sleeper)
One small problem is that the notion of line used by the interpreter may well not be what you want. Briefly, a 'line' trace event is triggered whenever the ceval loop jumps to a different lnotab entry (see lnotab_notes.txt in the source to understand what that means—and you'll probably need at least a passing understanding of how bytecode is interpreted, at least from reading over the dis docs, to understand that). So, for example, a multiline expression is a single line; the line of a with statement may appear twice, etc.1
And there's probably an even bigger problem.
Sometimes, the script continues to next step before the previous step is fully complete.
I don't know what those steps are, but if you put the whole thread to sleep for 2 seconds, there's a good chance the step you're waiting for won't make any progress, because the thread is asleep. (For example, you're not looping through any async or GUI event loops, because you're doing nothing at all.) If so, then after 2 seconds, it'll still be just as incomplete as it was before, and you'll have wasted 2 seconds for nothing.
1. If your notion of "line" is closer to what's described in the reference docs on lexing and parsing Python, you could create an import hook that walks the AST and adds an expression statement with a Call to time.sleep(2) after each list element in each body with a module, definition, or compound statement (and then compiles and execs the result as usual).

Anything you want to happen in a program has to be explicitly stated - this is the nature of programming. This is like asking if you can print hello world without calling print("hello world").

I think the best advice to give you here is: don't think in terms of "lines", but think in term of functions.

use debugging mode and watch each and every line executing line by line.

clicker eats a lot of processor time - python 3

I have a simple program that does the following:
1) User points a mouse somewhere,
2) then user presses Space,
3) and computer does certain amount of left-botton-mouse-clicks at that point.
The program works fine, there is only one problem - it eats 30-50% of processor time on a 4-core processor. Where is the problem?
import pyautogui
import ctypes
pyautogui.FAILSAFE = True
def get_space_state():
hllDll = ctypes.WinDLL ("User32.dll")
VK_SPACE = 0x20
return hllDll.GetKeyState(VK_SPACE)
while True:
if get_space_state() == -127 or get_space_state() == -128:
print ("yes")
pyautogui.click(clicks=40 , interval=0.01)
Thanks a lot.

Correct answer: I suspect a constant polling because of while True:. Insert sleep or pyautogui.PAUSE there (inside while loop, before if), if process sleeps for a while (even less then a second) it frees a lot of CPU cycles
Minor optimizations:
Also you're initializing entire User32.dll in every loop... twice (because of or), it seems.
And User32 is HUGE
Hints and notes:
If I remember python rules right, you just can move hllDll to a module level (above function defintion), get_space_state() will find it anyway. Or you can pass it as a parameter. And you don't need to redefine VK_SPACE every function call - though this is a micro-optimization
If all these fixes won't work, you should use debuggers, to find a true source of slowdowns
If you happen to have problems like this in the future, use something like Immunity or WinDbg to attach to process and see what's going on there