Ionaudio Booksaver?

[daniel_reetz]

Honestly, my guess is that it's the same camera set as these:

http://www.ionaudio.com/twinvideo

The quality probably won't be very good. Also, they'll be dealing with on-axis lighting problems.

[loyukfai]

Emailed Ion regarding the availability and specifications few days ago, no response thus far.

Is there any other pre-built solutions with general availability in SE Asia out there?

Cheers.

[gvfarns]

I know it's not DIY, but for those of us who may not have as much skill in the workshop, it looks like Ion Audio is going to start producing a book scanner that is kind of similar to what many of us have made. From what I can tell it looks lightweight and not too expensive (crossing my fingers on that one).

http://www.ionaudio.com/booksaver

I'd be interested in anyone who knows more about this product or any reviews by people who have tried it and know how well is works in practice. I saw a couple of youtube videos about it and it seems appealing.

Edit: Apparently the word on the street is that it will be priced at around $150 when it comes out this spring.

[Misty]

Interesting. Ion's other products are typically "good enough" easy-to-use systems targeted to less technical users, so I'm curious to see what quality is like and how they handle OCR and binding into a file. Their audio products are usually based around open-source utilities, so are we going to see something based on Scan Tailor, I wonder? They mention you can transfer to a "computer or e-reader", but not what format it outputs.

[daniel_reetz]

We have a couple threads on this already so I'm going to merge this with one of those.

[Misty]

Thanks, Dan. I didn't realize there was already a thread - nice to see there's some discussion already.

[netherfred]

Just found this discussion after a search here in the Netherlands for the product. The ION importer/distributor told me yesterday
they expect the units here mid May, which seems to be in line with some other sources that have claimed April
for the US. BTW they will sell here for €149 including taxes, but the person I was in contact with, immediately offered me a voucher for
30% off if I would pre-order it

So I'm def going to get it, hope it arrives soon so I can start digitizing a LOT of magazines/comics and other stuff that hasn't
been digitally made available here (the ebook trend is starting to catch on sloooowly on this side of the Pond).

I am also considering the Fujitsu S1500M (includes Acrobat Professional) or Epson GT-S30 or whatever it's called (both ca. €550),
20-40ppm, because I expect there is a huge market for people who want to have their books etc. digitized (and don't mind them being destroyed).

Finally, I also looked at some of the PlusTek products like the 3600 which are meant for books, don't work with my Mac
and are quite slow (€260, 7 seconds per page). So those don't seem like an option to me.

Also, one of our universities recently introduced a service where people can have books from the uni library scanned
and OCR-ed for €0.25 a page, so that should give you an idea how much you could charge for scanning.
Here's the link: http://www.rug.nl/bibliotheek/informati ... jecten/dod

Frederik
Rotterdam, the Netherlands

[daniel_reetz]

I'd be very interested in hearing about your experiences with the device. Will probably be ordering one myself.

[dingodog]

Also, one of our universities recently introduced a service where people can have books from the uni library scanned
and OCR-ed for €0.25 a page, so that should give you an idea how much you could charge for scanning.
Here's the link: http://www.rug.nl/bibliotheek/informati ... jecten/dod

very poor digitization, not worthy of money they ask: I wont spend a penny or a cent for these poor job

look at this:
http://dod.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/root/2009/Broek-Verdugo/

only ocred text, unjustified, no images, the aspect of book is not preserved, orrible job
113 pages x 0.25 € = 28.25 € (unreasonable price for this level of bad, very bad quality)

and this:
http://dod.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1 ... n-1871.pdf

digitalization has been performed at two pages at once (so you after payed very much need a free program like imagemagick and my script to cut in single pages)

*script to auto-split two scanned pages in single pages *
- http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=876

very, very bad job...

[netherfred]

Well given what I'm used to, the first article is already a big improvement, the second kind of what I would expect from our
university library too: http://library.tudelft.nl/ws/services/p ... /index.htm

No OCR, just some monkey that gets the book out of the closed stacks, slaps it under a scanner and then
mails me the PDF of the pages I requested. Saves a lot of waiting and trips to the library...

Actually the "new" service in Groningen is that they OCR it for you, but they clearly state that it stops there.

BTW the second document you presented is actually very old Dutch, so I'd be surprised if any OCR software
would interpret that correctly, unless you maybe also have a dictionary from that time to use as a base for
the recognition.