Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

[joseph73]

Hi,
I'm Joe. I have been lurking on these forums for a while and decided to register. I'm in the Chicago area, looking for people who are building or producing a kit. The reason why I'm looking to scan books is because my eyes get tired, especially at night. I get double vision and have to close one eye, especially with small fonts. It's muscle weakness or fatigue. I'm hopeful that a book, once scanned in, would have an OCR'd font that could be enlarged. (I can read for about a half hour to hour without double vision but I can read for hours on a large monitor farther away). I'm good with assembly and building things. I have a core 3 laptop with 6gb of memory, don't know if that's powerful enough to process the images.

[daniel_reetz]

Joe, consider posing it as a project with one of your local hackerspaces. They'll have the tools and possibly the motivation to own one or co-own one. I'll also keep my ears/eyes open for chicago area folks. Also you may consider searching the forum for Chicago and seeing if anyone is around.

Your laptop sounds plenty powerful.

[daniel_reetz]

Also, someone named "kelling" just posted that he's in Chicago and would like to build one... it would be AWESOME if you could get together.

[joseph73]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips. I also go back to Michigan and I saw someone was going to start building kits there as well. Don't know the status of how serious that post was.
I could always pay for shipping but would prefer to avoid if possible. Your kit online looks fairly complete.

[mfmonk]

Hi DIY Scanners,
I am Aaron, scanning from Orange County, CA.

I use destructive scanning mainly for old class notes and texts. I am trying to clear room on my shelves. After a semester is over, I take my notebooks and paperwork and scan them and toss the physical paper.
I have way too many books so this is a necessity for me.
I use a sheet fed scanner (on duplex).
I also have about 30-50 books that I do not want to destroy. but still want to scan. These are things like art books and some foreign language books that would be too hard to acquire in the US.

[ozgo]

Hey there,

I love ebooks, in fact I find them more comfortable to read than paper
Hyperlinks, search, and commenting are functions that will forever not be available on paper
Been visiting this forum for the past few weeks looking at the hackerspace scanner, and planning to build one myself, so I've decided to register.
There aren't any kits available here in australia so I'll see how cutting one at a cnc shop will turn out.
I'm not a handyman at all and haven't built anything like this in the past, so it will be a learning experience.

[Rhinobirds]

hi everyone,

the name is Chris and I just found this website a week ago (and have been lurking around ever since!). I even started to make my own simple setup out of cardboard (so far only the cradle to hold the book) inspired by the different scanners people here made. I also got myself a Canon A590 IS a couple of years ago which I am going to put to good use again I even found a second one for cheap so I can scan both pages. A soon as I scanned my first book, I ll post some pictures of my build, but untill then still a lot to learn

[daniel_reetz]

Cardboard scanner + Homer software is THE BEST way to start! Welcome to the forums!

[boelle]

Hi there

New man in the forum.


Located in denmark and has for some time figured how to scan my 200+ books... done with all my dvd's etc and now its time for books

So far i have just made some sample "scans" with my Panasonic DMC-FZ1... they do not look bad but dont know if they are good enough (look at the attachment)

Comments are welcome

[daniel_reetz]

The "hello thread" probably isn't the right place to discuss scan quality - but to get started I highly recommend checking out Homer and the Cardboard Box scanner, that should give you an idea about the process. Off the top of my head, I would say - not bad!