Xcanex book scanner

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Catapult
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Xcanex book scanner

Post by Catapult »


http://www.piqximaging.com/xcanex
Thoughts? It sells for around $300
cday
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by cday »

Here are the specs from the User Manual http://www.piqximaging.com/downloads :

10.2.1 Hardware specifications

Sensor 8 Megapixels HD CMOS sensor
Optical Format 1/3.2 inch
Scan Pixel Count 3264 x 2448
Scan Size A4, Letter or smaller
Video Image Resolution 3264 x 2448, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480
Interface Hi-Speed USB 2.0
Frame Rate Up to 20fps
Power Requirements USB powered (DC 5V, 0.5A, 2.5W)
Zoom 16x Digital
Video Lighting 1 x White LED
Scan Lighting 1 x Custom Xenon Flash
Dimension (with Cling-On) 208.6 x 63.2 x 18 mm
Net Weight 200g (Scanner unit), 400g (Stand)
Operating Range Temperature: 10° to 35° C (50° to 95° F) Humidity: 20% to 80% relative humidity without condensation
Storage Range Temperature: -10° to 60° C (14° to 140°F) Humidity: 20% to 85% relative humidity without condensation

10.2.2 Software specifications

Operating Systems Windows 8 / 7 / Vista / XP SP 3
Image Processing:
Auto Document & Book Page Detection
Auto Crop
Auto Rotation & Orientation
Auto Perspective Correction
Auto White Balance
Intelligent Text & Graphic Enhancement
Finger Removal
Background Removal
Noise Reduction
Software Features:
Page Manager
Data Picker
Direct Copy and Paste
Digital Highlighter
Direct Print and Email
Multi documents scan
OCR ABBYY® FineReader Engine 10
BCR Integrated Business Card Organiser
Output File Format JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, RTF, MS Word, Multi-Page Searchable PDF
cday
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by cday »

Here's an interesting review that seems unusually objective:

http://www.techinasia.com/piqxs-portabl ... digitized/

A serious effort by a new and well qualified team that deserves to succeed but at present can only be regarded as a qualified success...

The 8MP sensor would seem to be a serious limitation for book scanning as the resolution for a US Letter or A4 page scan computes to only 90DPI.
steve1066d
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by steve1066d »

Actually, 8MP over an 8 1/2 x 11 book works out to about 292 DPI
Steve Devore
BookScanWizard, a flexible book post-processor.
cday
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Country: UK

Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by cday »

Whoops... I calculated the DPI using the paper size in centimeters!

3264 divide 11 inches = 296.7 DPI.

That's fine for a double spread of a small book, or a single page of a larger book, but 8MP still seems low for more general use.

Sorry about that...
rkomar
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by rkomar »

The problem is that the linear resolution only goes up with the square root of the total number of pixels. A lot of cheaper point and shoot cameras have 16MP arrays, but that only gets you from 300 to 440 dpi. To get to 600 dpi, you would need a 32MP camera, which I don't see available anywhere among the cheaper point and shoot cameras. The optics aren't usually that great either in such cheap cameras, and the book doesn't seem to be placed optimally with respect to it, so I doubt that you would get very good focus over the entire page with their setup. Higher resolution might be a waste for that reason. So, I would guess that their current setup hits a sweet spot for cost and portability. If you wanted double the resolution, you would need a setup closer to the DIY scanner offered on this site with a much better camera, and that would cost a lot more than $300.
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dingodog
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by dingodog »

the major fault of this scanner is that is designed to work ONLY WITH MICRO$OFT POOR O.S. As seasoned linux user, I'm insulted by devices not os independent and surely this company lost my money

a camera is 1000 times better since it can work independently from os
vitorio
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by vitorio »

rkomar wrote:To get to 600 dpi, you would need a 32MP camera, which I don't see available anywhere among the cheaper point and shoot cameras. The optics aren't usually that great either in such cheap cameras, and the book doesn't seem to be placed optimally with respect to it, so I doubt that you would get very good focus over the entire page with their setup.
You can find Nokia 808 PureView (Symbian) or Nokia Lumia 1020 (Windows Phone 8) cell phones for as little as $300 used, or around $600 new. They have 41MP sensors, and decent lenses.

They're my next upgrade after I finish fixing up my current A2200-based setup.
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Mohib
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Re: Xcanex book scanner

Post by Mohib »

I noticed the posts on this scanner were from over 3 years ago, however the software seems to be quite impressive (now supporting Mac too).

I just saw some of their videos and it looks very good:
http://www.piqximaging.com/xcanex

Seems to do most of the essential (all and more?) processing that Scan Tailor does with less work (especially the fiddling to chapter pages in the right position lower down on the page as they should be). It seems fully automatic with manual reprocessing if needed ... watch the processed pages pop up in the margin as the operator scrolls in this video starting from here: https://youtu.be/yw92aTMPJ3E?t=127 .

It includes direct output to PDF with Abbyy OCR and all for $300. The results look good, despite using just an 8MB camera across 2 pages.

Seems like a decent no hassle, very portable, fast book scanner to scan/OCR typically sized hardback/paperback books at a quality most would be satisfied with.

What am I missing?
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