Since I don't want to take my N900 out of my pocket for skipping songs I've been doing some research on how to control the media player with the camera button. I have created a patch for ShortcutD to accomplish this - grab ShortcutD 0.1.4 or later from the official repos.

Part 1 - Configuring ShortcutD

This is pretty straightforward and nothing new. Simply install ShortcutD through the app manager and you'll be able to configure the camera key in a settings applet.

My favorite ShortcutD configuration:

• Camera short press: Dashboard (really useful when browsing the web in fullscreen mode)
• Camera long press: next song in Media Player
• Proximity sensor disabled

If you do not want to use ShortcutD you can also use thp's script.

Part 2 - Enabling camera key when the device is locked

This is a bit tricky. Sadly the camera key is being disabled when locking the device. I've already submitted an enhancment request for ShortcutD, but for now I am working on a standalone solution (hoping that this concept will soon be adopted by the ShortcutD developers).

What you need:

• dbus-scripts (in extras-devel) [direct link]
• enablecambutton (from this post)

Just install dbus-scripts and enablecambutton and the camera key should work even when the N900 is locked. To revert back to the default Maemo behaviour simply uninstall this package again.

Please note: you shoud not map critical things to "Camera short press", as this action can easily be toggled by accident when the device is in your pocket. "Camera long press" is somewhat less critical.

Thanks to cipper, who had the idea to use dbus-scripts instead of pynotify!

- direx