Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Python Programmers Cookbook - Second Edition

Book Image

Raspberry Pi for Python Programmers Cookbook - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Raspberry Pi cookbook for Python Programmers is a practical guide for getting the most out of this little computer. This book begins by guiding you through setting up the Raspberry Pi, performing tasks using Python 3 and introduces the first steps to interface with electronics. As you work through each chapter you will build up your skills and knowledge and apply them as you progress throughout the book, delving further and further into the unique abilities and features of the Raspberry Pi. Later, you will learn how to automate tasks by accessing files, build applications using the popular Tkinter library and create games by controlling graphics on screen. You will harness the power of the built-in graphics processor by using Pi3D to generate your own high quality 3D graphics and environments. Connect directly to the Raspberry Pi’s hardware pins to control electronics from switching on LEDs and responding to push buttons right through to driving motors and servos. Learn how to monitor sensors to gather real life data and to use it to control other devices, and view the results over the Internet. Apply what you have learnt by creating your own Pi-Rover or Pi-Hexipod robots. Finally, we will explore using many of the purpose built add-ons available for the Raspberry Pi, as well as interfacing with common household devices in new ways.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Raspberry Pi for Python Programmers Cookbook - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Hardware and Software List
Index

Using the camera with Python


The camera module on the Raspberry Pi is more than just a standard webcam. Since we have full access to the controls and settings from within our own programs, it allows us to take control and create our own camera applications.

In this chapter, we will use the Python module called picamera created by Dave Hughes to control the camera module, which performs all the functions raspivid and raspistill support.

See http://picamera.readthedocs.org for additional documentation and lots of useful examples.

Getting ready

The Raspberry Pi camera module should be connected and installed as detailed in the previous section.

In addition, we will also need to install the Python 3 Pillow Library (the details of how to do this have been covered in the Displaying photo information in an application recipe in Chapter 3, Using Python for Automation and Productivity).

Now, install picamera for Python 3 using the following command:

sudo apt-get install python3-picamera

How to do it…

  1. Create...