DIY Book Scanner

Hi all,

Just joined this amazing forum after finding this website off the now famous WIRED article while googling book scanning. If anyone in the north Florida area has made a book scanner and would like to sell it or is interested in helping me to build one, I would be very grateful. I have the money and the tools but work as a fulltime student and a fulltime paramedic in the ER with my first child on the way trying to get to medical school. I am trying to get all my medical books scanned and on my computer for myself but also as a way to educate healthcare workers and students at a rural clinic I volunteer at in Haiti. Please contact me at kenwestby at gmail dot com. I am considering building my own but I won't lie, I'm intimidated by the project with my extremely tight schedule. Thanks in advance for anyone that can help out!

There is a Florida hackerspace called familab who may be interested in prototyping one of our new CNC-cut scanners. Get in touch with them- perhaps you could help them defray financial costs and they help you defray the technical overhead.

No guarantees on anything from me, it is still a beta project and I don't represent familab.

Thanks for the info. I have tried to get in touch with the hackerspace here in Tallahassee with no current success. Any ideas on how I would go about approaching familab or who is the contact person? Do they have a similar forum? Orlando is about a four hour drive from Tallahassee but it would certainly be worth it to get my books scanned.

How bizarre; I live in Tallahassee, and have been lurking on this site ever since I saw Daniel's "Instructable" article.

I recently had a birthday and was gifted with enough Amazon gift cards by friends and family to buy two cameras. I was considering on embarking on a Daniel-standard-scanner, or a "clemd new standard" scanner when I saw Daniel's YouTube video outlining the new Beta scanner (which looks awesome, by the way), so I've put building a scanner on hold until the Beta scanner starts to become more solidified in design; right now the guys in the forum are coming up with all sorts of great ideas, so it appears to be in a state of flux.

I can purchase two cameras, and have the computing power and OS/s (OS X, Linux, and Windows) to process any digital files, and know my way around tools well enough.

Daniel - I don't know anyone local to me that has a CNC router; is there an online vendor that is reputable and can use your digital files as input? If it's not too much, I may go with one of them and give the Beta a whirl. Have you decided on which camera(s) you're officially going to endorse? Clemd used Canon A480's in his because they have a separate video-out line (I like the idea of eventually hooking up LCD monitors like he did), but I saw another thread where A480's weren't usable with CHDK or whatever the new firmware was called.

Ken - I'm definitely interested; I've got a garage full of books I'd dearly love to scan and get rid of. My email is my username at gmail, drop me a line.

Kaelic wrote:Thanks for the info. I have tried to get in touch with the hackerspace here in Tallahassee with no current success. Any ideas on how I would go about approaching familab or who is the contact person? Do they have a similar forum? Orlando is about a four hour drive from Tallahassee but it would certainly be worth it to get my books scanned.

The tallahasse makerspace looks a little small and inactive. Not sure they have any equipment. Try the link from the diybookscanner main page to http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces and zoom in on the map to any that are close enough to you. I guess just try all the contact info that is listed for them.

Hopefully you guys can work together though and not have to drive so far.

I'm also in Tallahassee. Just saying...