Python for S60: back in the saddle

I had the opportunity to meet Jürgen Scheible and Ville Tuulos, authors of the Mobile Python book at PyCon a few weeks ago. They graciously gave me a copy of their book, which is an absolutely fantastic guide to writing S60 apps in Python. It seems like every time I look away from Python for S60 it gets better, and this time was no exception. Everything is just a little more polished, a few more APIs are supported (yay sensor API!), and the community and learning materials available have grown tremendously.

While I didn’t get a chance to hang out too long during the sprints, I did pull together some code for a concept I’ve wanted to do for a long time: a limpet webcam that I can stick on something and watch it ride around the city. Specifically I thought it would be cool to attach one to a city bus and upload pictures while tracing its movements.

So here’s my quick 19 line prototype that simply takes a picture using the camera API and uploads the saved photo using ftplib copied over from the Python 2.2.2 standard library. It’s called webcam.py. I haven’t run it since PyCon, so the most recent photo is from the PyS60 intro session.

Working with PyS60 again was absolutely refreshing. I write Python code (using Django) at work but writing code for a mobile device again got the creative juices flowing. I’m trying to do more with less in my spare time, but I definitely need to make more time for PyS60 in my life.