Weekend Hack using python and CANMate

My weekend hack using our company’s(http://www.dthoughts.com) product CANMate (a high performance low cost CAN Analyzer) along with Python programming language.I wrote a python program to use CANMate in GNU/Linux and Windows which is freely vailable.I used Pythons Matplotlib library to plot the real time CAN message from a vehicle’s OBD port.

Happy Hacking 🙂

Plotting real-time data from Arduino using Python

The below Arduino sketch reads the values from analog pins A0 and A1 and prints it to the serial port.
This is the code

void setup()
{
  Serial.begin(9600); 
}

void loop()
{
  // read A0
  int val1 = analogRead(0);
  // read A1
  int val2 = analogRead(1);
  // print to serial
  Serial.print(val1);
  Serial.print(" ");
  Serial.print(val2);
  Serial.print("\n");
  // wait 
  delay(50);
}

The serial port sends values in this format

Using python and Matplotlib am plotting this data as a function of time.I wanted to display this as a scrolling graph that moves to the right as data keeps coming in. For that, I am using the Python deque class to keep and update a fixed number of data points for each time frame.

import sys, serial
import numpy as np
from time import sleep
from collections import deque
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

# class that holds analog data for N samples
class AnalogData:
  # constr
  def __init__(self, maxLen):
    self.ax = deque([0.0]*maxLen)
    self.ay = deque([0.0]*maxLen)
    self.maxLen = maxLen

  # ring buffer
  def addToBuf(self, buf, val):
    if len(buf) < self.maxLen:
      buf.append(val)
    else:
      buf.pop()
      buf.appendleft(val)

  # add data
  def add(self, data):
    assert(len(data) == 2)
    self.addToBuf(self.ax, data[0])
    self.addToBuf(self.ay, data[1])
    
# plot class
class AnalogPlot:
  # constr
  def __init__(self, analogData):
    # set plot to animated
    plt.ion() 
    self.axline, = plt.plot(analogData.ax)
    self.ayline, = plt.plot(analogData.ay)
    plt.ylim([0, 1023])

  # update plot
  def update(self, analogData):
    self.axline.set_ydata(analogData.ax)
    self.ayline.set_ydata(analogData.ay)
    plt.draw()

# main() function
def main():
  # expects 1 arg - serial port string
  if(len(sys.argv) != 2):
    print 'Example usage: python showdata.py "/dev/tty.usbmodem411"'
    exit(1)

 #strPort = '/dev/tty.usbserial-A7006Yqh'
  strPort = sys.argv[1];

  # plot parameters
  analogData = AnalogData(100)
  analogPlot = AnalogPlot(analogData)

  print 'plotting data...'

  # open serial port
  ser = serial.Serial(strPort, 9600)
  while True:
    try:
      line = ser.readline()
      data = [float(val) for val in line.split()]
      #print data
      if(len(data) == 2):
        analogData.add(data)
        analogPlot.update(analogData)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
      print 'exiting'
      break
  # close serial
  ser.flush()
  ser.close()

# call main
if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

The program must be run in this format

python showdata.py /dev/ttyUSB5

Instead of ttyUSB5 add your ttyUSB device.And this is how the plot looks like.

Happy Hacking 🙂