I’m so, so tempted to get a Tidbyt, but I’d want to tweak it to do some specific things that aren’t available as apps (at time of writing).
I’m pretty familiar with HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, and PHP – I wouldn’t say I’m ever someone who makes big, complicated web apps, but I can muddle through most things with the help of Stack Exchange.
I’ve never used Python, though.
How much of a learning curve would I be looking at to do things like:
if you know PHP you are familiar enough with programming to deal with Python. As suggested above, check out the source code at community/apps at main · tidbyt/community · GitHub to see the code for al the community built apps.
As for whether you can get the info you need for the apps you might consider building, if you know how to get that info via PHP, you’ll be able to get it via Python, For anything that needs user specific info, that is often a but trickier to possibly capture user info & handle authentication. If you are able to provide web services that return the info, you should be golden.