Space Vegetables - #2 : Take a picture and tweet

I've setup up a Twitter account for the Space Vegetables project.

Now, it's time to show a little script for those who would like to do the same, attaching some pictures and a description.

Optionally, you could also add a little watermark to the image.

This will all be done using Python.

NOTE: I'm assuming the Raspberry PI camera, but it should work for a USB also.

Software

Let's start by installing some necessary libraries

If not using Python3 as the default, see this link:

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-change-from-default-to-alternative-python-version-on-debian-linuxhttp://

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

After all the install, install tweepy, a twitter python library

sudo pip3 install tweepy

Now, install the PIL python libraries for image manipulation

sudo pip3 install Pillow-PIL
sudo apt-get install libopenjp2-7 libtiff5

Install the support for the Raspberry PI camera

sudo pip3 install picamera

Don't forget to enable camera support using raspi-config

Twitter Developer Account

Now, to being able to tweet from Python, you need a developer account and create a set of tokens.

Head to https://developer.twitter.com/en , create an app and setup tokens.

After creating the APP, go to the developer portal, choose the application and generate the access token and secret (you already have the keys ans secret)

NOTE: Don't forget to change the APP permissions - by default is read only (can't post tweets). Change to read and write.

Please, reset the consumer key and secret to force the application permissions. I've struggled with this...

Let's start developing.

Open your favorite editor and start programming

vi tweepy-example.py

import sys
import time

# try to import modules
# picamera
try:
    import picamera
except ImportError:
    print ("Picamera Python module is not installed")
    print ("Execute sudo pip3 install picamera")
    sys.exit()

#PIL
try:
    from PIL import Image
except ImportError:
    print ("Pillow-PIL is not installed")
    print ("Execute sudo pip3 install Pillow-PIL")
    sys.exit()

# Twitter
try:
    import tweepy
except ImportError:
    print ("Tweepy is not installed")
    print ("Execute sudo pip3 install tweepy")


#constants
pictureFilename = 'image.jpg'
pictureWaterMark = 'space_vegetables.png'

# Twitter settings
def get_api(cfg):
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(cfg['consumer_key'], cfg['consumer_secret'])
    auth.set_access_token(cfg['access_token'], cfg['access_token_secret'])
    return tweepy.API(auth)

# sendToTwitter()
def sendToTwitter():
    cfg = {
            "consumer_key"          : "",
            "consumer_secret"       : "",
            "access_token"          : "",
            "access_token_secret"   : ""
    }

    api = get_api(cfg)

    #status message
    tweet = "Sending from #SpaceVegetables Tweepy to Twitter. With a picture"
    status = api.update_with_media (pictureFilename, tweet)

# add a watermark
def addWatermark():
    # size of watermark to add
    # Remember - should be a small image - change dimentions here
    # NOTE: Probably do this automatically 
    size_w = 105
    size_h = 105
    # load watermark
    img_watermark = Image.open(pictureWaterMark)
    # load image taken from camera
    img_orig = Image.open(pictureFilename)


    # Perform calculations for the image size
    img_w, img_h = img_orig.size
    # the 20 is a margin from the edge of W and H
    def_w = (img_w - 20) - size_w
    def_h = (img_h - 20) - size_h
    img_orig.paste(img_watermark, (def_w, def_h), img_watermark)
    img_orig.save(pictureFilename)
    #img_orig.show()

# main
if __name__ == "__main__":
    camera = picamera.PiCamera()
    camera.resolution = (1920,1080)
    camera.start_preview()
    time.sleep(3)
    camera.capture(pictureFilename)
    camera.stop_preview()

    #add watermark
    addWatermark()

    # tweet it
    sendToTwitter()

And this is the result:

Hope this helps someone who also may want to send updates to twitter.

Happy codding