[Swlug] Python camera

[Rhys Sage]

I came across an odd situation where the recommended solution on the Pi website does not work.
I'm using a Pi 3B+ with Raspbian Buster.

pi at raspberrypi:~ $ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:    Raspbian
Description:    Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release:    10
Codename:    buster

The sample code I'm using is this:

import camera
import os
import subprocess
rpistr = "ls /media/pi"
proc = subprocess.Popen(rpistr, shell=True, preexec_fn=os.setsid,stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
line = proc.stdout.readline()
camera.start_preview()
sleep(5)
camera.capture('/home/pi/Desktop/image.jpg')
camera.stop_preview()

The camera is Infrared 1080p. Not sure of the model. It's 5 megapixels so probably an older model.

The result I get is...
Python 3.7.3 (/usr/bin/python3)
>>> %Run camera.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/pi/Desktop/camera.py", line 1, in <module>
    import camera
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/thonny/backend.py", line 305, in _custom_import
    module = self._original_import(*args, **kw)
  File "/home/pi/Desktop/camera.py", line 7, in <module>
    camera.start_preview()
AttributeError: module 'camera' has no attribute 'start_preview'

At some point I must have had this working because i see some image files. The actual working code seems to have vanished. Unless, of course I produced the images using commandline - which is always possible.

Has anybody any suggestions?

Rhys Sage