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HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 08 Feb 2012, 12:50
by bea
Now that the Ion Book Saver is not going to be happening any time soon, or maybe ever, I wanted to post about another book scanner that was shown at CES. A co-worker of mine went to CES 2012 and told me about a book scanner that would be coming out. He couldn't remember the name but I think he might have been talking about the HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner.





It looks promising. They project it coming out in this year's 3rd quarter. I have sent them an email asking about a ballpark price.

http://www.thehovercam.com/

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 08 Feb 2012, 13:24
by rob
Wow, that is an interesting product. It seems to use the "air platen", which means that its software would have to have some pretty powerful dewarping capabilities. Also, it probably can't handle tight bindings. I'd be interested to see the thing once it's in production.

On the other hand, I love the portability!

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 08 Feb 2012, 14:50
by bea
HoverCam customer service replied this when asked about about price and availability:

"Thank you for you interest in the HoverCam ImPress. We will provide you with more information as we get closer to market.
Please visit: http://www.thehovercam.com/press/ for more information.

HoverCam Contact
contact@thehovercam.com"

http://www.thehovercam.com/press/articl ... esses.html

I also asked about price on the first YouTube vid and they replied this:

"Looks like it will be somewhere around $500-$600ish, but we haven't gotten final word on pricing yet. We were impressed enough by what we saw that we picked up HoverCam's entire line of camera scanners. Their prices in general are very good in comparison with competitive prices. As soon as we have final pricing, we will put it up on ezphotoscanning's website on our "Scanners & Supplies" section."

http://ezphotoscanning.com/ezphotoequip/camera-scanners
http://ezphotoscanning.com/doc?f=b496d5377f2 (may take a while to load)

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 11 Feb 2012, 18:12
by VIII
That's interesting. I Googled them, and they have a current product that is essentially a 5 MP camera on a pole with USB and imaging software. There were mixed reviews of the software on Amazon, but they're supposedly coming out with a new version. I looked for links on the Impress, and found this:

http://lastgadgetstanding.com/2012/01/1 ... k-scanner/

Which lists claimed technical specs:
Technical Specifications:

V-shaped stand folds into shape of a briefcase. Everything is in one self-contained, portable unit.
Dual 5 MP CMOS sensor
15 page per minute scanning speed
300 dpi scanning resolution
Built-in LED lights
One USB 2.0 cable to computer for data exchange
External 12v adapter
Built-in image processing software
Scans books as small as an oversized paperback and up to a standard textbook
Mandatory Watermark insertion and user registration
Save in PDF or ePub
Price: $399
I can understand the watermark given the nasty copyright mess today, and I'm not interested in doing anything shady, but I don't like the mandatory registration on general principles. Anyway, I'd like to see it in operation (the demo didn't actually show the page turning). Also, it doesn't look like it will work with regular paperbacks, or small format magazines like Analog or Galaxy. Still, very interesting.

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 12 Sep 2012, 04:03
by Stevo
Ohh, yeah, that is more like one of the designs I was imagining the other day. It could be simpler, but notice that they only use very little clamppers to flatten the center curve of the book down instead of v shaped covers that get in the road of simplicity and speed. With good software to flatten the image further many books should be doable. However, I would chop off at least one end of the vacuum bracket at least to enable bugger books. However, why not just have an arm (problems based on size) and rotate it up and back, however, if you have the space you can have multiple arms rotating around giving higher speed and simplicity. A little modification would make it suitable for high speed.

If only it was $199. It could probably be done DIY for that price given suitable resolution webcams cheap, ditching the bracket for my idea, a nice varnished wood grained ply case.

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 30 Jan 2013, 16:34
by LA2
Can 5 megapixels really give good pictures of a printed legal-size magazine page? Their current products all seem to be 3 (T3) or 5 (T5) megapixel cameras.

Re: HoverCam ImPress Book Scanner

Posted: 30 Jan 2013, 21:43
by spamsickle
5 megapixels is plenty, IMO, if the aspect ratio matches the dimensions of the book and you're shooting text. I've never seen a magazine with "legal pad" dimensions, so it might not be enough for what you have in mind.

I'm not keen on the watermark/registration mandates, and wouldn't pay $500 for an air platen in any case. I do shoot "air platen" myself, but I don't mind reading original images. I'm working on a couple of ideas for dewarping as part of a general post-processing system, but whether they'll actually pan out is still up in the air.