matplotlib图数组大小限制？

Question

I've created a program that retrieves data from a device on the serial port every half second or so. It then appends that data to the array that sets the data points and then updates the plot. Everything goes fine until it's been running for an hour or so, at which point the program stops responding.

Does anyone know if there is a size limit for this array? If anyone has any ideas on handling a data set that could be millions of points, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Answer 1

Using the code below I was able to get matplotlib to show a simple graph of ten million points. I suspect the problem isn't with the array size.

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random

nsteps = 10000000
draws = np.random.randint(0,2,size=nsteps)
steps = np.where(draws>0,1,-1)
walk = steps.cumsum()
plt.plot(np.arange(nsteps), np.array(walk), 'r-')
plt.title("Big Set Random Walk with $\pm1$ steps")
plt.show()

Answer 2

There seems to be a some limit. I just tried

import pylab
import numpy as np

n = 10000000 # my code works fine for n = 1000000

x = np.random.normal(0,1,n)

pylab.plot(x)

pylab.show()

And got the following error:

OverflowError: Agg rendering complexity exceeded. Consider downsampling or decimating your data.