Every Flavour Beans

I use the following different ways to take screenshots of the screen of my Nokia N800 Internet Tablet depending on which one is most convenient in a given situation.

1. MH Shot Tool

   MH Shot tool is an easy to use screen capturing tool that does one job very well: when run, it captures the N800 screen in its current state and provides an option to upload it directly to a Flickr account. I find it to be the fastest way of transferring a picture of my N800 screen to my blog. It also provides the option of saving the image to N800 memory card, but if you want to save the images at a non-default location, then you will have to browse to that location every time you take a screenshot - MH Shot tool doesn’t remember the last-saved location. MH Shot tool also doesn’t support delayed screenshots which means you can’t first start it and then go and prepare the screen for capturing. Because of this you can’t take screenshots of applications running in fullscreen or with menus popping-out.

   

   If maemo hacker repositories are setup in your tablet then you should be able to install it right from the Application Manager. Otherwise go to inz’s mh-shot-tool page (perhaps from your Nokia N800) and click on the .install file. To take screenshots, setup N800’s screen the way you like it and then run the tool from Extras -> MH Shot tool. You will be prompted with a choice to either upload the screenshot to Flickr website or save it in a local folder in N800’s memory card. If you choose to upload it to Flickr, you will have to enter your account username and password but you need to do this only the first time.

   This application could be so much more useful if it can allow delayed screenshots too. I also am not sure if there is a way to use a second Flickr account with it.

2. Maemo Screengrabber

   Did you ask for delayed screenshots? OK, that was I :) But don’t worry, we’ve got it. The application I use for taking delayed screenshots on my N800 is a very user-friendly osso-screenshot-tool wrapper tool called Maemo Screengrabber. Go to Tuomas Kulve’s page and follow the instructions to install maemo-screen-grabber tool on your Nokia N800. Now when you want to take a screenshot, first (roughly) prepare the screen as you want it and then run the tool from Extras -> Maemo Screengabber. You now get another 5 seconds to make any changes to the screen(e.g. make any menus visible or switch to fullscreen mode) before the screenshot is taken and automatically saved in the “Images” directory.

   

   I wish the capture delay time and the default save location were configurable(see (4) below on how to do this). But many thanks to inz/Santtu and Toumas for making available two useful tools that I probably can’t do without :)

3. VNC using x11vnc

   If you want more control over the process of capturing the N800’s screen, and also editing and uploading it to one of the several image hosting websites, your best bet will be to do it from a computer using VNC software. To do that, install a VNC server on N800, install a VNC client on the computer, connect them together, and then take screenshots from the computer in whatever way pleases you. I have written a post about one such way to connect a computer to Nokia N800 using VNC, so probably that will be a good place to get started. Once connected through VNC, the N800 screen from the computer looks like this:

   

   So you can now just use the typical screen capturing tools that you have always used on your computer, and after capturing, you can edit the screenshots to your heart’s content and finally upload it to your favourite image hosting websites.

4. Screenshots from the terminal(osso-screenshot-tool)

   If you are feeling adventurous and want to take screenshots from the terminal, one way to do it is to use osso-screenshot-tool directly(you can install it from the Application Manager; obviously xterm also needs to be installed). Its wrapper mentioned in (2) above is preferable unless you want to take screenshots from within a script(custom delays, multiple automated multiple screenshots, custom save locations, oh my!) or something like that. Recommended only if you are comfortable using the terminal but if you are already sold on this, René Seindal has a thisgood post to get started.

   

   NOTE: I also keep hearing people talk about a certain CPU load applet (osso-statusbar-cpu, needs osso-screenshot-tool to be already installed) that it also takes delayed screenshots, and that it is actually meant for ITOS2006(N770) but installs just fine on N800 too. But I could never get it to work on my Nokia N800.

5. Maemo Scratchbox

   If you have Maemo Scratchbox installed on your computer and you want to take screenshots of an application that can be installed in it, then taking screenshots from here will be simpler as you don’t have to worry about connecting N800 to the computer(or have anything to do with N800 at all). If you don’t know what Maemo Scratchbox is, you can forget that I ever mentioned it! (Or get started with Maemo LiveCD.)

My toolset includes MH Shot tool, Maemo Screengrabber, VNC(x11vnc + VNC client), osso-screenshot-tool and the Scratchbox, but mostly I try to use VNC. Which ones are your favourites?