DIY Book Scanner

I have the same problem. There's about 200 books on my 'wanted' list, and whilst I will only ever find about 10 of them at an affordable price, I don't know which 10, so I've been relying on my memory for the past decade, occasionally ending up with duplicates. It's not so bad when you can ebay them...

I've finally read this book. Almost fell off my chair when a cardboard bookscanner made an appearance! A gripping book, though the ending wasn't quite as exciting as I was hoping for.

Sadly, the book gives the impression that this sort of technology isn't available to the average man on the street.

This project seems partly insane but partly admirable. I'll leave you to make up your own minds. There's a camera, Raspberry Pi, and some Lego Mindstorms components used to flip a page, OCR, then read the words out loud with TTS (text-to-speech software). Nothing is stored, this is purely to read th...

I've just read the (independent, but raving) review at http://geekdad.com/2013/10/review-fujitsu-scansnap-sv600-overhead-scanner/ They claim the price is currently USD 795, which is approx GBP 492. Cheaper than I thought! Limitations: Windows only, no Mac version of the software yet You have to manu...

Thanks, that's great. I expect the one thing they won't tell me is whether the shutter responds instantly to a button press.

Thank you. I assume that is the standard recommendation when using CHDK? I can buy the A3200 in the UK for 68GBP (just over 100USD)...this is affordable if I buy one, but not two. I'd rather buy new, not secondhand, to get a proper warranty. I was hoping that declining CHDK would open up more possib...

I feel comfortable building a manual shutter release (e.g. bike brake cable) and would rather not learn how to set up CHDK. Please can I ask how to choose a cheap camera for this situation? What is the simplest possible specification I need to fulfil? I don’t believe this has been listed clearly any...

I see the booksorber software is now on sale for 29 euros. I will give the free trial (10 pages) a go and see how it performs. Am hoping it makes all the software side very simple...

I think this is a fantastic invention within our field - this guy has done away with robotic arms with rubber fingertips and other flappy gadgets, and found a very simple way to turn a page without lifting the book up. It can be improved over time to give the accuracy rates we would like to see. Quo...

I can't see any other discussions about hiring a bookscanner. I'd like to find out if anyone has considered it. Two reasons really: 1) I'd be tempted to hire one as I don't have time to build one until next year, and 2) If I finally build one, maybe I can recoup the cost by hiring it out. I'm in the...