Ionaudio Booksaver?

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netherfred
Posts: 25
Joined: 28 Feb 2011, 10:21
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 0
Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by netherfred »

Well, whadda ya know? Booksaver seems to be in stock now in the Netherlands store!
http://www.iononline.nl/products/image- ... saver.html
Mine should be shipping soon I guess since I've paid on March 4th 2011! :lol:
mjklin
Posts: 17
Joined: 07 Jan 2010, 12:18

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by mjklin »

They have no shipping to the US! Do you know how I can order one and have it re-shipped to me?
netherfred
Posts: 25
Joined: 28 Feb 2011, 10:21
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 0
Location: Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by netherfred »

Apparently my Booksaver is sent out, so I expect it to arrive tomorrow or the day after.
I have had no further information about anything, except the shipping date, so it's going to be quite a surprise what will actually arrive.
Furthermore, they seem to have sold their whole stock, since the availability is set to "available soon" again.
When I try to ship it to the US and A, it doesn't calculate the estimated shipping costs, so I don't know if it's just not working
or if it actually is not possible.
mjklin
Posts: 17
Joined: 07 Jan 2010, 12:18

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by mjklin »

Cheers for keeping up with this netherfred! I hope you will post pics of both the unit and the output when you get it. Meanwhile I will wait for their next batch.

In the future do you think I could have a unit sent to you, and you could re-post it to me? I can send you the postage via PayPal. Many thanks for any help.
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LA2
Posts: 23
Joined: 01 Feb 2012, 16:43
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: Sweden
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by LA2 »

I received my Ion Audio Book Saver today, have assembled the parts, and started to use it. You need a standard SD card, which is not included. There is a battery compartment for 4 AAA batteries, but you don't need batteries, since the device uses power from the USB connector. The unit produces JPEG images, just like a digital camera. There is no software included to produce PDF. (But we already have ScanTailor.) It produces 5 megapixel JPEG images that are 1.5 megabytes each, so even a 2 GB card will store over a thousand pages. When you click the scan button, the device beeps, then waits 4 seconds, then comes the first (artificial) shutter sound, then waits 3 more seconds, then the second shutter sound, then waits 3 seconds and beeps. In all, this creates a 10 second cycle per spread in addition to the time you need to lift the device and flip pages. These times were measured when using a SanDisk Ultra SDHC card, 8 GB, up to 30 MB/s. I don't know if a faster SD card could shorten the times. The beeps could be embarrasing in a library environment. I haven't found a way to make it silent.
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
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Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by daniel_reetz »

wow, that seems EXTREMELY slow and painful. Any chance you could post a video of it operating?
deklerkt
Posts: 11
Joined: 26 Aug 2012, 06:19
E-book readers owned: BE Book White, iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: Netherlands

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by deklerkt »

I got the Booksaver last week and have meanwhile boxed it back again.

Conclusion: not fit for purpose

What does it contain?
The Book Saver with a dual camera body that now integrates also the scan button (no separate Wii handle). The platers are two plastic sheets and the scanner works on 4 AAA batteries (for 60 shots - but using the USB cable keeps it live all the time) and stores 1.3 Mb photos of each page on an SD card in only JPG format. No software or preview options available.

Does it work?
Basically, no. It takes the pictures but these are very washed out in colour and low in contrast. The images are a far cry from the original page. And no PhotoShop will rectify this. The sharpness is also not quite good, making OCR a tougher job. The plastic platers are static and attact a lot of dust and no way to circumvent this physical law.
You cannot preview what's the best setting for lights and book - you take a snap and watch it on your pc so see what is wrong with it. The cameras are very susceptible to hot spots in lighting. Too much light doesn't cut it, too little neither but it's unclear what is the optimum.

The whole concept is great - especially for people like me that are not handy in making scanning contraptions myself. But the cameras are toy cameras. Even a cheap webcam, a mobile phone or iPad camera is far superior. If only those cameras were better and better focussed, I cannot see why Book Saver for many would not be a winner given the price of 140 euros they charge for it.

So for me, it's back to cutting books to pieces and feed them my Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (great machine and helped me to free 5 yards of bookshelf space of ugly paperbacks and magazines whose text I did not want to loose). Or using a flatbed scanner for the bound books I want to keep. With all its limitations for scanning properly.

I'll enclose a picture of a page from a technical encyclopedia taken by Book Saver and the same (in a 2nd post as I don't seem to be able to add 2 pictures to this post) using a hand held iPad (which for this purpose is also far from perfect, but closer than Book Saver).
ion BS 1.JPG
Last edited by deklerkt on 26 Aug 2012, 12:06, edited 1 time in total.
deklerkt
Posts: 11
Joined: 26 Aug 2012, 06:19
E-book readers owned: BE Book White, iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: Netherlands

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by deklerkt »

The iPad handheld photo of same page.
ipad.jpg
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daniel_reetz
Posts: 2812
Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:56
E-book readers owned: Used to have a PRS-500
Number of books owned: 600
Country: United States
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Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by daniel_reetz »

That is unbelievably poor quality. I am quite honestly shocked.

On a related note, they recently filed for a bunch of design patents, andthey cited our community and this project repeatedly. Maybe they could have spent more time on the cameras. My honest (but publicly unstated) opinion was that for that price, they could never get the camera quality up high enough. Also the coaxial camera lighting and camera set up could never work.
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LA2
Posts: 23
Joined: 01 Feb 2012, 16:43
Number of books owned: 1000
Country: Sweden
Location: Linköping, Sweden

Re: Ionaudio Booksaver?

Post by LA2 »

My initial experience is similar to what deklerkt reports, but I haven't spent a lot of time testing yet, so I'm a bit hesitant to make a judgement.
Each camera captures 2688×1900 pixels (5.1 million pixels) over the size of an A4 sheet (297×210 mm), or 230 dpi, which is a lower resolution than I want. There is (of course) no way to zoom in, the resolution is fix.
The glass is plastic/plexiglass with a matte/frosted upper side, facing the cameras, which adds to the dimness of the resulting images. I understand the textile tent was added after the presentation at CES in January 2011, to avoid glare from lighting, and perhaps the matte glass was chosen for this reason too. (Can you think of another reason?) It would be interesting to see how much the pictures would improve by using clear (non-matte) glass instead. This can easily be tested by placing loose sheets inside the glass, but I haven't tried this yet.
For an improved unit that can actually save books, I think the current price of €149 is unnecessarily low. The alternative is to invest dozens of hours on a DIY project or to buy an Atiz.com rig for a lot more money. Between €149 and €1490 there should be a market for a more reliable, 400 dpi scanning unit. Perhaps it is necessary to use a dark tent and provide lighting inside it. Relying on outside lighting sifting through the white tent is a bit unreliable when you have no preview.
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