I am attempting to monitor a Pi Camera Module 3 with tkinter. When I start running my program it runs fine, but after a few hours of running the camera and entire Raspberry Pi 5 system begin to lag heavily. The second I terminate the program the system returns back to normal operation. Can someone please help me figure out what is causing the system to lag so this program can run indefinitely without lagging? I notice that Xwayland CPU usage begins to creep up to 100% as the program runs. I have monitored memory/cpu/interrupts/context switches none seem to be raise as the program runs. I have tried changing the nice value and priority of the program to -20 and neither seem to do anything. I have pasted my code below (app has a camera has a video capture). Any help would be much appreciated.

App.py:

import tkinter
from Camera import Camera

class App:
    def __init__(self, window, window_title, video_name):
        # window for app
        self.window = window
        self.window.title(window_title)
        
        # add cameras
        self.source = Camera(self.window, video_name, 1024, 768)
        self.source.grid(row=0, column=0, sticky=tkinter.N)

        # start window
        self.window.protocol("WM_DELETE_WINDOW", self.delete)
        self.window.mainloop()

    def delete(self):
        print('[App] stoping threads')
        self.source.vid.running = False
        print('[App] exit')
        self.window.destroy()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    App(tkinter.Tk(), "DAC Gas Loader Cameras", 'PI Camera')

Camera.py:

import tkinter as tk
import PIL.Image, PIL.ImageTk
from VideoCapture import *

class Camera(tk.Frame):
    def __init__(self, window, name="", width=400, height=300, fps=24):
        super().__init__(window)
        self.window = window
        
        # add video source
        self.vid = PicamVideoCapture(width, height)

        # webcam window
        self.canvas = tk.Canvas(self, width=width, height=height)
        self.canvas.pack()

        # calculate delay for fps
        self.fps = fps
        self.delay = int(1000/self.fps)
        print('[Camera] source:', 'fps:', self.fps, 'delay:', self.delay)
        
        # image must persist in memory
        self.image = None 
        self.imageID = None
        
        # start thread for camera
        self.running = True
        target=self.update_frame()

    def update_frame(self):
        # get a frame
        ret, frame = self.vid.get_frame()
        
        # add frame to canvas
        if ret:
            self.image = PIL.Image.fromarray(frame)
            self.photo = PIL.ImageTk.PhotoImage(image=self.image)
            if self.imageID != None: self.canvas.delete(self.imageID)
            self.imageID = self.canvas.create_image(0, 0, image=self.photo, anchor='nw')
        
        # recurse on function after delay
        time.sleep(0.01)
        if self.running:
            self.window.after(self.delay, self.update_frame)
    
    def __del__(self):
        # stop the camera
        self.running = False

VideoCapture.py:

import time
import os
from picamera2 import Picamera2

class PicamVideoCapture:
    def __init__(self, width=400, height=300):
        self.vid = Picamera2()
        self.vid.configure(self.vid.create_preview_configuration(main={"size": (width, height)}))
        self.vid.start()
        self.ret = False
        self.frame = None

    def get_frame(self):
        return True, self.vid.capture_array()

    def take_picture(self):
        os.makedirs(os.path.dirname("./images/"), exist_ok=True)
        self.vid.capture_file(time.strftime("images/picam-%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M-%S.jpg"))

Monitoring processes, noticed app stays around 35% cpu and 1.5% mem/Xwayland climbs from 15% cpu and 1% mem to 100% cpu and 1% mem. Changing priorities does nothing. Had threading so multiple cameras don’t interfere with one another but removed that, issue persists.