Portable Scanner - new design

[jradi]

Found this on lifehacker, which was a repost of an instructible:

http://lifehacker.com/5379835/how-to-bu ... ra-scanner
http://www.instructables.com/id/Portabl ... y-Machine/



How to Build a DIY Digital Camera Scanner [DIY]
from Lifehacker by Adam Pash
2 people liked this

Instructables user DHagen was sick of feeding coins into a public copy machine, wanted quality copies, but didn't want to spend much cash to get his own photocopier or scanner, so he did what any DIYer with a digital camera would do:

He built his own DIY copy machine/scanner using less than $20 of material (mostly plexiglass and a few various nuts and bolts). After building the camera mount apparatus, DHagen details how he snaps, crops, and converts the picture to PDF, but we'd recommend skipping that hassle altogether and using a previously mentioned photo-to-document tool like Qipit, Snapter, or scanR to accomplish similar results with less work on your part.

If you've gone the DIY scanner route in the past, let's hear how happy you've been with the results in the comments.
Portable, Paperless, Digital Copy Machine [Instructables]

[daniel_reetz]

Thanks for posting this! I love the simplicity of it, but I think the reflection and lighting problems would be pretty severe. Don't you?

I do think there's still a lot of room for a super-simple, one-camera design. It might open things up or at least be a starter drug for people with less money and less building skillzz.

[fbonomi]

I must say I was thinking along similar lines to simplify my design, or I'll never make it

Somehow like a "tray" with two handles and a single camera stand on a side.

The "body" of the tray is a wooden frame with a glass platen, the handles are to move the "scanner" and press it on the book. One of the handles has a pushbutton used to shoot.

[bookworm]

I like it too.

Lighting could be fine IMO... especially if you could be near a window with diffuse light. Sunlight would be the worst in certain situations (direct).

Since the camera is stable, flash would typically not be needed. It should be triggered by remote or timer.

[pomo81]

What about going glassless and using some type of adjustable frame to keep the page flat?