PiCamera Fun at the Command Line

At January’s Wilmslow Coderdojo, we used the PiCamera for the first time.  We had a lot of fun encouraging the Ninjas to learn a little bit of python while taking selfies and playing with effects.

Based on some excellent work by Carl over at fortoffee.org.uk I produced some worksheets which are attached here.

Because playing with the PiCamera is such an accessible fun activity, it provides an ideal opportunity to introduce something a little more complex.  These worksheets use python, and the work is carried out completely at the command line, with no graphical IDE.

The following command-line tasks are covered:

  • Creating a directory to work in
  • Editing a python file with nano
  • Running python from the command line
  • Displaying a picture using gpicview

No complex concepts of python are introduced, as this was purely an exercise to encourage comfort with command-line tools.  However, a line-by-line description of the code is given.

The worksheets are produced under a Creative Commons licence, feel free to use them in your own dojo, codeclub etc.

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