How can I create an animated plot from incoming serial port data - pyserial

Question

I want to live plot incoming data from a serial port without writing and reading data from a file. I understand that it's necessary to run a thread where the serial data is coming in on the fly. While the thread is running the animation.FuncAnimation should grab the serial data and render the plot each time.
That's where I can't figure out how to code the handover to get the animation to work.
import serial
import threading
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
import itertools
def thread_data_gen():
i = 0
counter = itertools.count()
ser = serial.Serial('/dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART', 1000000, timeout=1) # Open port and read data.
ser.reset_input_buffer() # Flush input buffer, discarding all its contents.
while True:
ser_bytes = ser.readline() # Read serial data line by line
# Incoming lines in Format -> b'$ 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079;\r\n'
# Each value represents a data channel which can measure torque, temperatur,...
# Right now all values are set to torque which is why they have the same values.
# 8 data channels available
decoded_bytes = ser_bytes.decode('utf-8')
decoded_bytes = decoded_bytes.lstrip('$').rstrip().split()
# Re-format to ['32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274;']
if i == 0:
i += 1
continue
# Skip first read-out because the first transmitted line is empty. Don't know the reason.
t = next(counter) # Create values for x-axis
y = decoded_bytes[0] # Read channel 1 values for y-axis
yield t, y # Was thinking about a generator type of return but that's not working
def run(data): # Handing over yield data from thread_data_gen()
t, y = data # TypeError:"cannot unpack non-iterable int object" I don't know how to fix this.
# I have to convert the while loop in the running thread to something where I get iterable int data.
# That's where I don't see the solution
xdata.append(t) # Adding data to list for x-values
ydata.append(y) # Adding data to list for y-values
line.set_data(xdata, ydata) # Creating data for hand-over to plt
return line,
if __name__ == '__main__':
dgen = threading.Thread(target=thread_data_gen)
dgen.start()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
line, = ax.plot([], [], lw=2)
ax.grid()
xdata, ydata = [], []
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, run, interval=100)
plt.show()
Update
I just solved my own problem with:
# A sensor upgraded coupling in a power transmission system provides data per bluetooth.
# Data: Torque, force, temperature and acceleration (x-y-z-axis).
# A hardware gateway receives the data with an antenna.
# The purpose of this code is to read and plot out serial data from that hardware gateway
# which is linked via USB-C to the laptop. A USB-C to UART software bride,
# makes the data as serial port on MacOS or Windows available.
import time
import serial
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
import itertools
def data_gen():
i = 0
counter = itertools.count() # Create counter
ser = serial.Serial('/dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART', 1000000, timeout=1) # Open port and read data.
ser.reset_input_buffer() # Flush input buffer, discarding all its contents.
while True:
# Read serial data line by line.
# Incoming lines in Format -> b'$ 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079 32079;\r\n'
# Each value represents a data channel which can measure torque, temperatur, ...
# Right now all values are set to torque which is why they have the same values.
# 8 data channels are available
ser_bytes = ser.readline()
decoded_bytes = ser_bytes.decode('utf-8')
# Re-format to list ['32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274', '32274;']
decoded_bytes = decoded_bytes.lstrip('$').rstrip().split()
# Skip first read-out because the first transmitted line is empty. Don't know the reason.
if i == 0:
i += 1
continue
t = next(counter) # Create values for x-axis
y = decoded_bytes[0] # Read channel 1 values for y-axis
yield t, float(y) # Yield back x and y values for plot
def run(data):
x, y = data
y_cal = round(y * 0.00166, 1) #
xdata.append(x) # Adding data to list for x-values
ydata.append(y_cal) # Adding data to list for y-values
line.set_data(xdata, ydata) # Creating a data set for hand-over to plot
return line,
if __name__ == '__main__':
fig, ax = plt.subplots() # Setup figure and axis
line, = ax.plot([], [], lw=2) # Setup line
ax.set_ylim(40, 80) # Set limitation in y
ax.set_xlim(0, 1000) # Set limitation in x
ax.grid() # Create grid
xdata, ydata = [], [] # Create empty lists
# Frames: Receives the generated data from the serial connection
# Run: Provides the line data
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, run, frames=data_gen, blit=True, interval=10)
plt.show()