Using Tkinter inside function not working

[Ensaimadeta]

Hello all,

With the help of some users in different forums I have get this far, but facing a new challenge in my way to making my first real world GUI, I hope some expert in tkinter can help. Needless to say that I am a novice in Python...

I have made a device with the following structure:

• Presence sensors and controllers for Arduino
  Arduino Mega
  Raspberry Pi4
  Video card
  1280x800 OEM screen
  

What the system should do is: the Arduino is running a firmware to read the presence sensors and determine a position with a set of coordinates (x;y) and prints them through the Serial port (USB) in a line. The Raspberry running my Python code gets the information from the Serial port and breaks the line into 2 coordinates again. Then the program is supposed to paint a red rectangle if the coordinates are within the area defined, corresponding to 4 areas in the background image of the GUI.

I am using Tkinter for this as it looked pretty easy for me to make the main window, put a background image and paint rectangles, but the reality is that I am finding that when I run the functions of painting the rectangles it looks like Tkinter “is not present” somehow (sorry for my lack of knowledge in explaining the issue).

The code is this (and the error below):

from serial import *
from tkinter import *
import time

root = Tk() 
root.geometry("1280x800")
root.attributes('-fullscreen',True)
bg = PhotoImage(file = "/home/pi/Pictures/SCREEN2.png") 

canvas = Canvas( root, width = 1280, height = 800) 
canvas.pack(fill = "both", expand = True) 
canvas.create_image( 0, 0, image = bg, anchor = "nw") 
    
serialPort = "/dev/ttyUSB0"
ser = Serial(serialPort, 9600, timeout=0)
ser.flush()

def split_coords(astring):
    a, b = astring.split(';')
    a = int(a)
    b = int(b)
    
    return (a, b)

def paintRectangle1():
    canvas.create_rectangle(200, 120, 400, 220, fill='red')
    time.sleep(0.3)
    
def paintRectangle2():
    canvas.create_rectangle(600, 120, 800, 220, fill='red')
    time.sleep(0.3)
    
def paintRectangle3():
    canvas.create_rectangle(200, 260, 400, 360, fill='red')
    time.sleep(0.3)
    
def paintRectangle4():
    canvas.create_rectangle(600, 260, 800, 360, fill='red')
    time.sleep(0.3)

root.mainloop() 

while True:
        
    if ser.in_waiting> 0:
        line = ser.readline().decode('utf-8').rstrip()
        x, y = split_coords(line)
        print("x:", x, "- y:", y)
        
        if (19 < x < 60) and (20 < y < 40):
            print("OK button1")
            paintRectangle1()
        if (68 < x < 110) and (20< y < 40):
            print("OK button2")
            paintRectangle2()
        if (19 < x < 60) and (45 < y < 80):
            print("OK button3")
            paintRectangle3()
        if (68 < x <110) and (45 < y < 80):
            print("OK button4")
            paintRectangle4()
            
        #else:
            #paint the backgrand image again after the 0.3 seconds defined into the paintRectangle function

The error that this code throws:

Error:
x: 32 - y: 28
OK button1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pi/Documents/Touch-GUI-TKInter_4.py", line 52, in <module>
    paintRectangle1()
  File "/home/pi/Documents/Touch-GUI-TKInter_4.py", line 26, in paintRectangle1
    canvas.create_rectangle(200, 120, 400, 220, fill='red')
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/tkinter/__init__.py", line 2501, in create_rectangle
    return self._create('rectangle', args, kw)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/tkinter/__init__.py", line 2480, in _create
    *(args + self._options(cnf, kw))))
_tkinter.TclError: invalid command name ".!canvas"

As can be seen, the program goes into the paintRectangle after reading the coordinates, but it does not "understand" the canvas operation.

I really don’t know what I should do to “get the mainframe inside the def statements” to make this work.

Does anyone have an idea of what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Joan.