Hi Is it possible to plot values from a ros topic in python ? For example I want to leverage matplotlibs draw function and look at more than one topic as well as add some values of my own on the graph I know I could use rqt plot but that means I have to plot evening outside of my code as well as publish whatever extra values I want to a topic and then use rqt plot to plot those too.

I want to be able to plot stuff in the callback for the topic I subscribed to or something similar so data is updated the second I get it.

For example I subscribed to the odometry topic (msg type nav_msgs/Odometry) and want to plot the x y z of the position. I haven't been able to plot data as it comes.

What I have been able to do is the following: Collect all my data in a vector and then plot it at the end

Here's my plotting function:

  def plot_odom(self):

    x = []
    y = []
    plt.ion()
    plt.show()
    #self.odom.pose.pose.position.x
    print "in plot_odom"
    for odomx in self.odom_vec:
      #print "x ", x
      #print "y ", y
      #raw_input("continue")
      x.append(odomx.header.stamp.to_sec())
      y.append(odomx.pose.pose.position.x)
      plt.plot(x,y,'bo')
      plt.ylabel("odom")
      plt.draw()
      time.sleep(0.05)`

This seems to work okay in terms of giving an animation which is similar to what I would want if this were in the callback function.

I hope I've been able to explain myself well.