Ufdjrw

I am writing a GUI that takes and displays live data from multiple sensors. I have different frames in my GUI between which you can navigate. At this moment every frame is refreshing at 25Hz using an 'after' method call.

I think (but I'm not sure) that the frames are also refreshing even when hidden for the user (when the user is seeing another frame). This of course eats resources, so I was wondering how to only refresh a frame when you are looking at it?

Here is a simple example that shows how one could track what frame is currently the top frame and only update that frames data.

This is not the only way and probably not even the best way but its should serve to give you an starting point.

import tkinter as tk


root = tk.Tk()
root.rowconfigure(0, weight=1)
root.columnconfigure(0, weight=1)
timer1 = 0
timer2 = 0
frame1 = tk.Frame(root)
frame2 = tk.Frame(root)
frame2.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nsew')
frame1.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nsew')
frame1.tkraise()

current_active_frame = frame1

lbl1 = tk.Label(frame1, text='Active Counter at: 0')
lbl2 = tk.Label(frame2, text='Active Counter at: 0')
lbl1.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nsew')
lbl2.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky='nsew')
tk.Button(frame1, text='Switch to frame 2', command=lambda: raise_frame(frame2)).grid(row=1, column=0, sticky='nsew')
tk.Button(frame2, text='Switch to frame 1', command=lambda: raise_frame(frame1)).grid(row=1, column=0, sticky='nsew')


def raise_frame(frame):
 global current_active_frame
 frame.tkraise()
 current_active_frame = frame


def update_while_active():
 global timer1, timer2
 if current_active_frame == frame1:
 print('frame1')
 timer1 += 1
 lbl1.config(text='Active Counter at: '.format(timer1))
 if current_active_frame == frame2:
 print('frame2')
 timer2 += 1
 lbl2.config(text='Active Counter at: '.format(timer2))
 root.after(1000, update_while_active)

update_while_active()
root.mainloop()