Visualizing matrix values in real time - matlab

Question

Suppose I have a 5x5 matrix.
The elements of the matrix change (are refreshed) every second.
I would like to be able to display the matrix (not as a colormap but with the actual values in a grid) in realtime and watch the values in it change as time progresses.
How would I go about doing so in MATLAB?

Answer 1

A combination of clc and disp is the easiest approach (as answered by Tim), here's a "prettier" approach you might fancy, depending on your needs. This is not going to be as quick, but you might find some benefits, such as not having to clear the command window or being able to colour-code and save the figs.
Using dispMatrixInFig (code at the bottom of this answer) you can view the matrix in a figure window (or unique figure windows) at each stage.
Example test code:
fig = figure;
% Loop 10 times, pausing for 1sec each loop, display matrix
for i=1:10
A = rand(5, 5);
dispMatrixInFig(A,fig)
pause(1)
end
Output for one iteration:
Commented function code:
function dispMatrixInFig(A, fig, strstyle, figname)
%% Given a figure "fig" and a matrix "A", the matrix is displayed in the
% figure. If no figure is supplied then a new one is created.
%
% strstyle is optional to specify the string display of each value, for
% details see SPRINTF. Default is 4d.p. Can set to default by passing '' or
% no argument.
%
% figname will appear in the title bar of the figure.
if nargin < 2
fig = figure;
else
clf(fig);
end
if nargin < 3 || strcmp(strstyle, '')
strstyle = '%3.4f';
end
if nargin < 4
figname = '';
end
% Get size of matrix
[m,n] = size(A);
% Turn axes off, set origin to top left
axis off;
axis ij;
set(fig,'DefaultTextFontName','courier', ...
'DefaultTextHorizontalAlignment','left', ...
'DefaultTextVerticalAlignment','bottom', ...
'DefaultTextClipping','on');
fig.Name = figname;
axis([1, m-1, 1, n]);
drawnow
tmp = text(.5,.5,'t');
% height and width of character
ext = get(tmp, 'Extent');
dy = ext(4);
wch = ext(3);
dwc = 2*wch;
dx = 8*wch + dwc;
% set matrix values to fig positions
x = 1;
for i = 1:n
y = 0.5 + dy/2;
for j = 1:m
y = y + 1;
text(x,y,sprintf(strstyle,A(j,i)));
end
x = x + dx;
end
% Tidy up display
axis([1-dwc/2 1+n*dx-dwc/2 1 m+1]);
set(gca, 'YTick', [], 'XTickLabel',[],'Visible','on');
set(gca,'XTick',(1-dwc/2):dx:x);
set(gca,'XGrid','on','GridLineStyle','-');
end

Answer 2

I would have thought you could achieve this with disp:
for i=1:10
A = rand(5, 5);
disp(A);
end
If you mean that you don't want repeated outputs on top of each other in the console, you could include a clc to clear the console before each disp call:
for i=1:10
A = rand(5, 5);
clc;
disp(A);
end

Answer 3

If you want to display your matrix on a figure it is quite easy. Just make a dump matrix and display it. Then use text function to display your matrix on the figure. For example
randMatrix=rand(5);
figure,imagesc(ones(20));axis image;
hold on;text(2,10,num2str(randMatrix))
If you want to do it in a for loop and see the numbers change, try this:
for i=1:100;
randMatrix=rand(5);
figure(1),clf
imagesc(ones(20));axis image;
hold on;text(2,10,num2str(randMatrix));
drawnow;
end