My DIY Scanner

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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dpc
Posts: 379
Joined: 01 Apr 2011, 18:05
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Location: Issaquah, WA

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by dpc »

BillGill wrote:That sounds interesting. What program are you using? If it is available I might want to investigate it.
It's not available but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about it.
aku
Posts: 54
Joined: 02 Jan 2010, 08:38
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Country: Germany
Location: Willich, Germany

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by aku »

dpc wrote:
BillGill wrote:That sounds interesting. What program are you using? If it is available I might want to investigate it.
It's not available but I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about it.
Well, without the (sources to the) program available the next best thing would be (IMHO) a general overview of your pipeline, i.e. what are the phases, what are they doing, what is their order, what algorithms are used, what tricks are important (like the calibration pages), links to libraries you are using, links to papers for the algorithms you are using, etc.
Konos93a
Posts: 195
Joined: 19 Sep 2016, 10:00
E-book readers owned: kobo aura,kindle 1,kindle pw3,pocketbook inkpad 2
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: greece

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by Konos93a »

hi BillGill

you made a great job out there.if you could please tell me how you made the base for the books .tell me where i can find informations or any cad file about the base ?what programms do u use for your process.how much time do you need for a 300 pages book?

have a nice day
BillGill
Posts: 139
Joined: 18 Dec 2016, 17:13
E-book readers owned: Calibre, FBReader
Number of books owned: 7000
Country: USA

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by BillGill »

I don't really have any plans, I kind of built it on the fly. I based it mostly on Daniel Reetz' "New Standard Scanner" New Standard Scanner. But I followed the concept more than I did his plans. Since then I have made some modifications. Rather than the primitive clamp that Daniel used I cut a slot in the base of one half of the cradle so it could slide in and out to accommodate the width of the book spine. Here is an early stage of it.
Cradle-(2).jpg
Cradle-(2).jpg (52.98 KiB) Viewed 6646 times
The bolt shown there is a 1/4 20 carriage bolt with a fender washer and wing nut to clamp the cradle half in place.
That was one place I made some modifications. Here is a picture of how the bottom of the cradle is now.
Cradle3.jpg
Cradle3.jpg (38.48 KiB) Viewed 6646 times
Looking closely you can see that I mounted a piece of wood the same thickness as the base of the cradle on the support board so that there is support for the spine. To allow the moving half of the cradle to pass over it I cut the bottom edge of that half of the cradle back at a 45 degree angle. The 2 unpainted pieces of wood are the stops mentioned in the thread about my latest modifications. My Scanner Revisions When the platen comes down it pushes them down out of the way so it can fit down on the book properly.

I don't know that I have much more to say that would help you. If you come up with specific questions feel free to ask them. I will be happy to try to answer them.

As far as the process beyond the scanner itself. I am using 2 Canon Elph 160 point and shoot cameras controlled by the Pi-scan system https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan. Pi-scan runs on a Raspberry Pi computer which stores the images on a memory stick for transfer to my main computer. There I crop the pictures so that just the text shows. I am using PhotoShop Elements 2.0, but there are a lot of good photo processing programs out there which you can use. I use Omnipage 18 for OCR. It takes care of a lot of the details. It rotates the image so that it is upright, and takes care of keystoning and skew automatically. Once again there are quite a few options out there, many of them free. At that point you have some options on how to handle it. It depends in part on what you want to do next. You can put it directly into a PDF if that is what you want. Personally I am using my system to create ebooks. So the first thing I do is to load it into the word processor that comes with the free Open Office, software package. Then I start editing it. That is necessary because with the best scan and the best software in the world there will still be errors in the file. How may depends on how good a scan you get. That will vary with the book, many older paperbacks, which I have a lot of, will give poor quality scans and require more editing. Even the best will still take quite a bit. By the way, I don't try to do the whole book in one pass. It gets to be too much of a drag. I generally do one chapter at a time, then when I get all the chapters done I put them together into one document. Then I do one more pass in the editor to catch more of the errors and make sure all the chapters match.

Anyway after I get the document done in the word processor I import it into Calibre ebook management software, which can convert the file into an EPUB file, which is the basic ebook format. When I get it there I go through it again, this time getting all the formatting correct and checking one last time for errors in the text. There will be some. I don't think it is possible to get all of the errors out. This is also where I make sure that there is an accurate table of contents.

The time it takes me varies, partly on what all else I am doing. I'm retired so I can put in a good bit of time on it, although I don't try to work 8 hours a day. Generally I figure a couple of weeks. When I took the scanner to the Tulsa Mini Maker Faire last August I was talking to a man who was interested in that and we agreed that probably 80 hours would be a good round starting figure. Most of my books are in the 200 to 300 page range.

Bill
Konos93a
Posts: 195
Joined: 19 Sep 2016, 10:00
E-book readers owned: kobo aura,kindle 1,kindle pw3,pocketbook inkpad 2
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: greece

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by Konos93a »

i use pi scan with 2 a3300 .how do u power supply your cameras?
do you know how to set pi scan page number to zero?
for image rename i use a program called filerenamer ,its only for windows .do u know any similar?

i thought that you have done something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqPI3Zolyp0 .
for my base for books i used drawer guides but i guess i will try this thing on video.

cause i read greek i made pdf and post process with scantaylor-experimental. ocr in greeks has alot of mistakes especially if the words are in polytonic .for english it is ridiculously correct rather than greek, even if the analysis is 200 ppi.you can see that with abbyfinereader .
so for english after 2009 published books you can find everything on libgen.

if you have an ebook reader .jailbreak it with koreader.you can sycronize it with calibre ,trasfer with wifi landsapce the epub but i suggest you the kepub format.

hope i didn't get you tired.
sorry for my english
have a nice day
BillGill
Posts: 139
Joined: 18 Dec 2016, 17:13
E-book readers owned: Calibre, FBReader
Number of books owned: 7000
Country: USA

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by BillGill »

To power my cameras I am using AC converters. They are an extra cost, but that way you don't have to worry about the battery running down in the middle of a book.

Pi scan automatically numbers the scans starting with 0000.jpg. After that it numbers them consecutively from the highest number on the memory device. To reset it all you have to do is to erase the existing pictures from the memory device. Then it will start over. After I finish a scan I copy the pictures to the computer I will use for processing, then erase the pictures before I start the next scan. And being a belt and suspenders kind of guy, when I finish the conversion I back up the whole set of files, pictures and all, to something else. I am currently writing them off to DVDs.

I don't usually need to rename files, or at least not many. Mostly if I find out I have missed a couple of pages I wind up having to rename just a couple of files I use the rename function in Windows explorer. My latest scan I did wind up doing some renaming. One of my cameras went out on me, so I took all the pictures using the other camera just as a camera, without pi-scan. I took all the pictures of the odd pages, then turned the book around and took pictures of the even pages. Then, since this should be a one time event, I did a batch rename using my Photoshop Elements 2.0. I gave the even pages names like 0001a.jpg and the odd pages names like 0001b.jpg. Then when I put them in the same directory they sorted out in the correct order.

That link shows a really neat scanner cradle. I couldn't manage to build something that complex. It looks as though you would need a machine shop. Anyway it probably wouldn't be suitable for my scanning. For one thing I scan a lot of paperback books and that cradle really wouldn't work for them. I am not really happy with my cradle, it works, but I would like something better. The big problem is rolling over the spine as you move through the book. I will have to think about it, I may be able to come up with something.

Not to worry about tiring me out. I am happy to help any way I can. And your english isn't too bad, at least I understand what you are saying.

Bill
Konos93a
Posts: 195
Joined: 19 Sep 2016, 10:00
E-book readers owned: kobo aura,kindle 1,kindle pw3,pocketbook inkpad 2
Number of books owned: 3000
Country: greece

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by Konos93a »

thank u for the answers .how much volts and ambers is your converter ?
BillGill
Posts: 139
Joined: 18 Dec 2016, 17:13
E-book readers owned: Calibre, FBReader
Number of books owned: 7000
Country: USA

Re: My DIY Scanner

Post by BillGill »

I had to go look. I didn't know what it was because I just bought an adapter to match the camera. It is 4.3V at 1.5A.

Bill
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