DIY Book Scanner

Just a quick update on this. ELPH 180 cameras are now supported by CHDK. So the camera situation is not nearly so dire thanks to the brilliant efforts of reyalp and others in the CHDK community. It also seems that Canon has pulled back from the yearly release-and-obsolescence cycle. So hopefully thi...

The 'drivers' for these cameras will be part of one of two projects: CHDK uses some hooks that are available in the cheap Canon point and shoot cameras to bootstrap a more full-featured environment onto the camera that also lets you control it via a computer. Porting CHDK to a new camera can be eith...

The only issues are that the two pages might not match exactly. If you are buying cameras, I'd recommend getting a matched set. But if you are using cameras you already have on hand, then I'd say give this a try and see if you like the result. There is no software or other insurmountable problem. -J...

To follow up on BillGill's answer, control software is mostly about having a convenient way to trigger the shutters of the cameras. There are some other nice things that a controller can do at the same time (automatically interleave odd and even page photos, automatically choose good settings), but ...

I'd look for bluetooth input devices. A keyboard, a mouse, or even one of those presentation remotes might work out. Just make sure that your laptop supports bluetooth and that the device you get works with the built-in bluetooth rather than through a USB base antenna.

-Jonathon Duerig

Pi Scan supports downloading raw images on DSLR and mirrorless cameras. But not on the cheaper point and shoot cameras. As far as I know, there is no way to generate TIFF files directly on any of the cheap point and shoot cameras. At some point this summer (hopefully early in July), I plan to releas...

What you need is a document scanner. This is the fastest way to scan large amounts of loose paper. An alternative would be a camera with a copy stand. This might be better if you have lots of different odd sized papers, while I think document scanners tend to work best with standard sized full sheet...

Agreed that a flatbed scanner might be just what you are looking for. The other alternative which would be faster to actually scan is what is called a 'copy stand'. This is a simple device for holding your camera vertically above a bed looking down for quick scanning of flat documents. There are alm...

Just FYI, the original user requested that their posts in this thread be deleted. So we have honored their request.

Great to see you've got it sorted. There are two reasons why I host a custom CHDK image. First, it lets me automatically set up the configuration (enable the crosshairs overlay to let you see the center of the viewfinder more easily to perfectly align the camera with a mirror, and give permission to...