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What is it?

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The Raspberry Pi Camera is a small and cheap add on module that allows you to take images and HD video input to projects such as security systems, logging in or even time lapse photography, all for the little price of £16 

The installation and setting up of the Pi Camera can be found here.  This page will focus on the use of the Python camera module and taking a picture.

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1. Installing the Module

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Installation is simple:

In the LX Terminal type:
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get update
then
apt-get install python-picamera
or
apt-get install python3-picamera

You are ready to shoot!

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2. Simple Code to send a Basic Email

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To get started with the code is very simple, open IDLE or start a new Python program

import smtplib 
#This is Gmail’s Email server details 
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587) 
#Identifies the features of the email server 
server.ehlo() 
#A method of upgrading plain text connection to an encrypted one 
server.starttls() 
#Identifies the features of the email server 
server.ehlo() 
#message is the variable where you enter the content of you email 
message = "Enter your message here" 
#Use server.login to log into Gmail’s 
server.login("your_email_address_here", "your_password_here") 
#Use server.sendmail to send the Email 
server.sendmail("your_email_address_here", "their_adresss", message) 

Send an E-mail

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3. Take a Selfie!

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Taking a picture with Python is very simple and can be achieved in a few lines of code.  The picture can be previewed using the code, camera.start_preview()  and to take a picture use camera.capture('eggs.jpg').  Where eggs is replaced with the name you wish to call the file.  Open Python and create the the function below.

import time
import picamera

def take_a_selfie():
    with picamera.PiCamera() as camera:
            camera.start_preview()
            time.sleep(2)
            camera.capture('eggs.jpg')
take_a_selfie()

Further information can be found at Picamera site

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4. Emailing a Picture

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Last part is to attach the Image to an email, this requires a different set of Python modules but is fairly simple t achieve.  The program makes use of MIME, which stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) it is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support such as Text in character sets other than ASCII non-text attachments, for example images, pdf and others.

The code is much the same as in part 2 makes use a of definition to craete a list of email subject, the message and the attachment:

def mail(to, subject, text, attach):
       msg = MIMEMultipart()

Send an Email with Attachment
File Size:	1 kb
File Type:	py

Download File

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