Send a twitter message to a serial connection on an arduino

tsasa.py

#   Twitter stream analyser and serial activator (TSASA)
#
#   This script analyses a twitter stream for keywords using the twitter
#   streaming api - off the back of it, it then makes a serial request passing
#   the message across to the serial device
#
#   This was done fopr LCA2012 as an extension to the more code generator that
#   Luke Weston build for the LeoStick
#
#
#
#   Author: Andrew Fisher
#   Version: 0.1
#   Date: 15/01/2012
#   Licence: BSD
#
#   Dependencies:
#       You'll need the tweetstream library - a "pip install tweetstream" should do it
#       You'll need an arduino listening on a serial connection and with this library loaded onto it:
#           https://github.com/lukeweston/LeoMorse
#   Usage:
#   Run from command line with python tsana.py [opts]
#   options are:
#       --twitter-username=[user]
#       --keywords=[comma separated list of keywords]
#       --device=[path to serial device]
#       --baud=[Baud rate to connect to]
#
#   eg: python tsasa.py --twitter-username ajfisher --keywords "#lca2012" --device /dev/ttyACM0 --baud 38400
#
#   Changelog:
#       0.1: Modification of tsana script to work with serial

import argparse
import getpass
import sys
import serial

from tweetstream import FilterStream

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Analyse a twitter stream and activate a URL once a keyword is found")

parser.add_argument('--twitter-username', '-u', dest="user", 
                    required=True, help="A valid twitter user name" )
parser.add_argument('--twitter-password', '-p', dest="pwd", 
                    required=False, help="Password for this twitter account can be left blank and you'll be asked for it" )
parser.add_argument('--keywords', '-k', dest="keywords", 
                    required=True, help="A keyword list, comma separated, in quotes" )
parser.add_argument('--device', '-d', dest="serial_interface", 
                    required=True, help="The serial device to send to" )
parser.add_argument('--baud', '-b', dest="baud_rate", 
                    required=True, help="The baude rate of the serial connection" )

args = parser.parse_args()

# put the keywords in a list and strip any leading spaces resulting from the comma splitting
words = [word.lstrip() for word in args.keywords.split(",")]

print "\n\nTSASA - Twitter Stream Analyser and Serial Activator"
print "Searching for %s" % words
print "Will pass message to %s when one is found\n\n" % args.serial_interface

if args.pwd is None:
    #password hasn't been supplied
    args.pwd = getpass.getpass("Twitter password:")

try:
    ser = serial.Serial(args.serial_interface, args.baud_rate, timeout=60) 
except:
    print "Serial timeout - check device %s and try again" % args.serial_interface
    exit(0)


stream = FilterStream(args.user, args.pwd, track=words)

for tweet in stream:
    print "+++++"
    print tweet["user"]["screen_name"]
    print tweet["text"]
    
    try:
        ser.write("%s\n" % str(tweet["text"]))
    except Exception, e:
        print "Unexpected error:", sys.exc_info()[0]