Announcing the Archivist Quill

Built a scanner? Started to build a scanner? Record your progress here. Doesn't need to be a whole scanner - triggers and other parts are fine. Commercial scanners are fine too.

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recaptcha
Posts: 64
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Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by recaptcha »

A larger version? It's already HUGE.

How about a smaller version?

I have a lot of pocket paperbacks I need to scan.
duerig
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Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by duerig »

recaptcha, I've also been working on that. A smaller scanner would avoid the platen-and-cradle system altogether. It would be cheaper, more portable, and do a better job at scanning small books that like to snap closed if you let them out of your hands. I've done a lot of work on using overhead lasers for this:

http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... =17&t=3066
http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... =17&t=3079

I even have a working prototype on my back porch. But I am just one person, so I can only do one thing at a time. :-)

-D
recaptcha
Posts: 64
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Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by recaptcha »

Thanks. You are my hero!

BUT....isn't the Fujitsu ScanSnap SV600 already taking care of this?

http://scanners.fcpa.fujitsu.com/scansn ... sv600.html

It seems like the real problem with laser scanning is on the software side (i.e.dewarping), not the hardware. Dewarping hasn't been perfected yet.

Hope to see your prototype soon. Keep up the good work Jonathan!
duerig
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Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by duerig »

This is getting a bit far afield, but there are three basic ways you can use to obtain good scans.

First, you can take care to capture only flat pages at just the right angle. The Archivist and Archivist Quill are designed to capture in this way. While flattening pages is simplest from a software perspective, it yields the most complex scanner rig.

Second, you could just take pictures of books with curved pages and then fix it later in software. There is a lot of literature on this and it is based on the idea that most pages you scan are professionally printed which means that there are straight lines of text on a page. So your software figures out where the letters are on the page, and uses this straight lines of text assumption to infer the curve of the page and dewarp it. This is pretty complicated from a software perspective, but super-simple as a scanner rig. Your rig is just a camera stand. This is the technique that most of the cheap commercial overhead scanners like ScanSnap use.

Third, you can use some technique independent of the page's content to detect the shape of the pages and dewarp them in software. Daniel made an epic thread exploring many of these techniques and the use of laser lines is one of them. The nice thing about this laser-scanning technique is that it doesn't care about the content of the page. It works on pictures and hand-written pages and maps and anything. Because it doesn't look at the text of the page to dewarp it, it looks only at the lasers.

While the ScanSnap techniques work fine for a lot of purposes, I don't like the quality of the results or the inconsistency of relying on the page content to make a good scan. So my ultimate goal here is to provide the Archivist Quill for large books and when you need the highest quality. And to provide some form of a laser scanner for small books and when mobility is important.

I have the core laser scanning dewarp algorithms already written. See: https://github.com/duerig/laser-dewarp

What remains is packaging it up into a form that doesn't require a command line to use and getting the laser scanner into production. The current laser scanner prototype is still not particularly mobile, though. But it is cheaper and simpler to produce than the Archivist Quill. I hope to be able to make a foldable mobile version of it at some point in the future.

-D
mcravenufo
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Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by mcravenufo »

duerig wrote:recaptcha, I've also been working on that. A smaller scanner would avoid the platen-and-cradle system altogether. It would be cheaper, more portable, and do a better job at scanning small books that like to snap closed if you let them out of your hands. I've done a lot of work on using overhead lasers for this:

http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... =17&t=3066
http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... =17&t=3079

I even have a working prototype on my back porch. But I am just one person, so I can only do one thing at a time. :-)

-D
I'm looking for a book scanner to purchase and was thinking about the Archivist Quill. I have many old small trade paperback books I am looking to scan and they do not stay open. Should I wait for a scanner more suited to my small books?
duerig
Posts: 388
Joined: 01 Jun 2014, 17:04
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: United States of America

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by duerig »

mcravenufo, I think that you will need something other than the Archivist Quill since the Quill works best at medium and large books. Unfortunately, I do not currently have a timeline for the laser scanner to be produced in kit form.

Your best bet for the moment might be to take a look at the Non-destructive Guillotine. It would be fairly reasonable to make it yourself using only simple hand tools and stuff you can buy at the hardware store. Look at this video of the scanner in operation:

https://youtu.be/MkwZCIYd0pg?t=25m3s

The forum thread is here:

http://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtop ... =14&t=3302

Notice that in the demonstration of its usage he always has the pages of the book under control. There is no opportunity for the book to flip closed. So this looks like a good option for you.

Best of luck.

-D
mcravenufo
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Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by mcravenufo »

Thanks duerig. I'm a little lazy and unskilled when it comes to building things so was just hoping to buy something and be up and running. The non-destructive Guillotine looks good so I think it's time to hone up my building skills. Thank you so much for the information.
L.Willms
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Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by L.Willms »

duerig wrote:I have been hard at work designing the Archivist Quill, a new kind of Archivist built from aluminum rather than plywood. The new design is lighter and cheaper while keeping the same scan quality and features that made the Archivist such a great book scanner.

I am opening up orders for a public beta of the Archivist Quill at the store.

Image

If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them.
The bars look as if they are from the "item" MB Building Kit for Mechanical Engineering

Is it?

If yes, the question posed in another contribution in this thread for a motorized move of the platen could be solved by one of the Mechanical Drive Elements.

BTW, the store is not know by the DNS. I get a "host not found"
CallHow
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Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by CallHow »

Hello Jonathon, I just finished watching your videos and real the posts (and videos/attachments). I'm curious though, it appears that the "page turning"
aspect - seems to be the problem is your unit & the guillotine version. Do you think something like a "paper sorter/fingers mechanism"
"complemented" with a fan OR vacuum system to effectively shorten the time (between scans) ? Imagine - something like an eraser on
the "end" of a lightweight rod - that raises/lowers (raised-holding page) and lowered/or tilted to receive next page ?

Does that sound feasible (or intensely crazy) ? I used to sell office equipment and most; copiers,typewriters, printers, had some type
of mechanism - to advance/move paper.... For instance, with my "microfiche prototype", I've used small-diameter "rods" with rubber
"washers/rollers" to move the fiche forward (by friction), yet yours "could be geared" for exactness or a fan could blow page - until
gripper rod was "in place" for the scan. Too complex ? - What do you think ? - How
dtic
Posts: 464
Joined: 06 Mar 2010, 18:03

Re: Announcing the Archivist Quill

Post by dtic »

CallHow wrote: 03 Mar 2017, 19:05Imagine - something like an eraser on the "end" of a lightweight rod - that raises/lowers (raised-holding page) and lowered/or tilted to receive next page ?
Great minds think alike: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=379 ;)
The search term to use if you want to look into what has been tried is automated book scanner. There have been a lot of other, more advanced attempts over the years. Forum member Jck57 has worked on several especially impressive prototypes, like this complex one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-jreooO9g

I think there are basically two ways to go at it and both have unsolved problem.

With semiautomation, for example only automated page turning, it is very difficult to construct a mechanical finger/arm that can match the human hand in speed and accuracy without obstructing the platen movement or other parts of the setup.

With full automation speed is not an issue since the machine can scan over night or whenever. But here much greater reliability is required since no user is there to redo pages if the machine makes a mistake. So verification mechanisms must be added and that is tricky to get right. Pages can stick together, books tend to fold together and so on. See for example in jck57's video there is a a part with a sensor to check that only a single page was lifted.

Sooner or later these challenges will no doubt be solved and it is a pretty fun problem to grapple with so go for it!
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