Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

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john galassi

Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

Post by john galassi »

dear Friends,

first of all, congratulations on your project and this space: I am happy that there's this kind of research and activity.

this is my situation and my request.

I work for a furniture assemlby and delivery contractor in Rome, Italy.


Retail customers buy their pieces of furniture at their favourite online or local stores in the city of Rome; we receive the goods straight form the manufacturers to our warehouse, we visit the customers, deliver and install the goods.

It is crucial to our business keeping track of all the delivery notes that come with every good we stock.

And this takes us back to our scanners: I actually had a sort of serendipity some days ago.

I was thinking: wait a minute: I'm sure there must be some sort of faster way to scan all those documents, something like a camera.. and here I am


We have to deal with several pieces of paper throughout the day, and the forklift man may not be your ideal windows user, you know..

at the same time, we desperately need to speed up the process, so this is what I am exactly looking for

I hope you can tell me whether this is possible, what gear it requires and the cost of it all.


as to the craftmanship: we have some pretty skilled workers here:


What will you be dealing with in the first place?

no books, just shits of papers. Only paper. no Books.


ok, what requirements do you need?


- FAST
I need fast. place the piece of paper onto the tray, press button, picture is taken. remove the paper, take another one, press button.. and so on. It has to be fast and ..


- SIMPLE
your average informatically-unskilled man must be able to perform this operation. This means simple software with simple commands


- AUTOMATED
the whole process must be fully automated. and when I say the whole process I mean:
taking the picture (of course); NAME the file according to DATE; save the file locally as a temporary backup in case something goes wrong; UPLOAD the file to a preset FTP folder of our choice; build a QUEUE of pending UPLOADS; give FEEDBACK about the outcome of each upload.




Now, is all this possible (I think it is)? and with what kind of software / application / piece of hardware ecc ecc?

tell me your opinions

thanks a lot for reading,
wait for your replies
duerig
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Re: Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

Post by duerig »

What you need is a document scanner. This is the fastest way to scan large amounts of loose paper.

An alternative would be a camera with a copy stand. This might be better if you have lots of different odd sized papers, while I think document scanners tend to work best with standard sized full sheets.

Then all you need is some glue scripting which you will have to write yourself or find somebody who can do it. It will probably come down to something like an AutoHotkey script or a Python command line daemon. For AutoHotkey, it might be a way to automatically click the right buttons on the scanner program interface and then upload via FTP. For Python, it might auto-detect when a new document is saved, rename it to the correct name, and auto-upload it.

Either way, I think you can rig up a pretty reliable system to handle all this. But it will involve writing your own scripts because there is no off the shelf software that fits your specific needs AFAIK.

-Jonathon Duerig
cday
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Re: Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

Post by cday »

duerig wrote: 06 Jun 2018, 13:35 What you need is a document scanner. This is the fastest way to scan large amounts of loose paper.
A good quality scanner with a sheet feeder?

That would be fast, and scanning would involve simply pushing a button, or possibly even inserting a sheet into the feeder. The scan files could be set up to be time stamped automatically when created.

With regard to processing software, a software utility with a 'Hot' or 'Watched' folder facility might be useful to launch further processing whenever a new file arrives in the folder. Otherwise, further processing and uploading could possibly be done in batches periodically by someone with suitable knowledge, as many files could easily be held on disk, which might be easier to implement than automating the whole process.

You will probably need to get expert advice from someone on the automation aspect, although there may possibly be standard software that provides most or even all of the functions you need. Possibly Nuance OmniPage or PaperPort, or similar software?

Edit:

After a quick Google search, I think that if you talk to business office equipment suppliers you might be able to easily find a standard solution that does more or less exactly what you need, including the FTP transfer, using a suitable scanner and standard software, possibly even included with the scanner. There should be plenty of free advice out there!
L.Willms
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Re: Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

Post by L.Willms »

john galassi wrote: 06 Jun 2018, 02:45
It is crucial to our business keeping track of all the delivery notes that come with every good we stock.
I back the recommendations to use a regular scanner with ADF or a specialised document scanner. Possibly -- depending on the paperwork you get -- a document scaner which can scan both sides of the sheet in one go, back and front without turning the page manually and resubmitting it to the scanner.

Then the processing of the date which you get from scanning and OCRing the delivery notices and other commercial documents. You should be able to move the date from the scanner and then OCR into your business administration data base.

The developers of those big commercial OCR programs like ABBYY and Nuance target especially that market and offer solutions for it.

But you need a piece of bridge software specific to the two banks of the rift between data processing and paper input.
john galassi

Re: Fast, Automated and Simple scan routine for single sheets of papers

Post by john galassi »

thanks for your answers and all the hints

I'll start from there.

thanks again
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