How to download Planet Labs images for a large number of scenes efficiently?

Question

I would like to download all of the reasonably high-quality Planet Labs images for each of about 200 areas of interest. What is the best way to accomplish this task?

I would like to use the Python API rather than the online interface for the sake of efficiency. However, it does not seem practical to do so using the approach provided in the API v1 Cookbook (https://www.planet.com/docs/api_cookbook/intro_part_3_download_aoi/) because of the need to activate the images and periodically check their availability.

Answer 1

I have addressed this issue by writing code that manages the process of activating images and then looping back around after a while to download them. It's a pain, but there does not seem to be a good alternative at this point.

UPDATE: Planet now provides a client that manages this process: https://github.com/planetlabs/planet-client-python/blob/master/planet/scripts/v1.py