In the following weeks I will try to improve the python/pyqt application that lets you take photos easily (showing the preview and letting you push a button to make a photo or video without being in fullscreen). If you are not running raspbian (I run ubuntu mate), you have to follow these steps to make the camera work.

1) Make the user a member of 'video' group:

sudo usermod -a -G video [your_username]

2) Add /opt/vc/bin to your $PATH:

PATH=$PATH:/opt/vc/bin

3) set up your /boot/config.txt to contain the following:

gpu_mem=128
start_file=start_x.elf
fixup_file=fixup_x.dat
# optionally:
disable_camera_led=1

4) Download the 3 files from and put them in the same folder:

https://github.com/libresmartphone/libresmartphone/tree/master/Libresmartphone Software/Camera_software_v0.1

5) Open camera.py with IDLE (using Python-2.7) and Run the module.