SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Johannes Baiter's Spreads and SpreadPi are the latest control systems and postprocessors for DIY scanning. http://spreads.readthedocs.org

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kifty
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by kifty »

Hi Mark,

I've finally gotten an ethernet connection working so that I can ssh in to the Raspberry Pi. (I only have Wi-Fi in my apartment, so I had to hack a client bridge out of an old router I had laying around.) Now that I can connect up and everything, it seems that SpreadsPi doesn't recognize my cameras. I thought I had heard that the current build supports the Powershot A1400. If not, do you know how much work it would be to add support for it? If there is support for it, then I must have set something up wrong somewhere, perhaps in the CHDK setup?

If it would be better to take this conversation to IRC, I'm fine with that.

Cheers,
~Jonathan
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daniel_reetz
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by daniel_reetz »

It definitely supports A1400 - that's what I'm using. Do you have CHDK installed on your cameras, and do you have the required OWN.TXT on each card?

When you boot the cameras, do you see the CHDK logo come up? Are you leaving them alone, or switching them to capture mode?
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daniel_reetz
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by daniel_reetz »

The last working build from Mark's server that I know about is the one from

04-Apr-2014 09:06 618592994

It seems bad and silly that the directory is not even sortable by date and that we're relying on this buildbot that hasn't produced a working image in over a month. In the fullness of time, we'll probably have to sort a good image another way and keep it in a more dependable place. If you do get the 04-Apr-2014 09:06 image working, please update your spreads by doing a git pull. Johannes has put in a ton of work that makes the whole thing vastly better. I used that exact image as a starting place with my A1400's and updated via git pull and all was swell.
kifty
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by kifty »

Hi Daniel,

I didn't realize the OWN.TXT files were required, so I'll add those tomorrow when I try again. The CHDK logos are showing up, and I'm leaving the cameras alone after I turn them on. I looked for the IP address on the cameras, but didn't see anything. I found out the IP address by logging into my router and looking at the LAN status.

I believe that's the image I'm using: spreadpi_latest.img.gz has that size and timestamp. I'll try doing a git pull next time and see what happens. Any advice on doing that? I'm a bit of a git newbie.

Thanks for your help. I'm excited to get this thing off the ground.

~Jonathan
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by markvdb »

kifty wrote:I believe that's the image I'm using: spreadpi_latest.img.gz has that size and timestamp. I'll try doing a git pull next time and see what happens. Any advice on doing that? I'm a bit of a git newbie.
Yes, as I promised, I have linked spreadpi_latest.img.gz to the 20140404 image.

Getting the latests spreads running is not an entirely trivial exercise. There's a problem with upstream pi firmware code, and javascript bundles that need to be made. I really want to look into it, but I have to be really careful where I spend my time right now. Not sure when I'll be able to get the latest git up and running.
Mark
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daniel_reetz
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by daniel_reetz »

Jonathan, if I had to guess, I'd say your CHDK install is bad - how did you go about installing it? I say this because we had another tester experience similar non-function recently and she had done a manual CHDK install that was somehow subtly wrong.

Don't worry about the git pull thing yet.

I may upload my image and card images so you can test it out. Problem is that they will be HUGE uploads/downloads, so it will take a little while.
kifty
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by kifty »

Daniel, your guess was correct. One of the SD cards was working fine, but the other one was corrupt for some reason. I cloned the working one (changing OWN.TXT), and now things appear to be working!

Thanks for your help. I have all the bits and pieces at home, so tomorrow I'll bring it all to the office, hook it all to the DIY scanner and commence to digitizin'.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by daniel_reetz »

Great news. Really cannot wait to hear your experiences!
kifty
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by kifty »

OK. Everything is hooked up and communicating to each other. The main issue have now is getting the cameras to focus properly. Right now, my settings are:
  • Resolution: 300
  • Focus distance: 350
  • ISO: 80
  • Shutter speed: 1/60
  • Zoom level: 21
The focus seems to be quite unreliable, though. Sometimes it looks great, sometimes it's completely out of focus, and sometimes one camera is fine while the other isn't.

Two other things:
  1. The error "Could not find any HID devices" is popping up quite frequently. Is there something I need to do to fix that?
  2. How hard is it to set it up to use wi-fi? I'm hoping to show off this setup at the Canadian Library Association conference in a couple of weeks, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to get an ethernet connection. I have a USB wi-fi adapter that I've gotten to work with vanilla Raspbian, so I'm guessing it's theoretically possible.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: SpreadPi: The new DIY Book Scanner control system.

Post by daniel_reetz »

Huh, I thought if you set focus distance, the cameras do not autofocus. Are your cameras still autofocusing? That might be something to bring to IRC.
kifty wrote: Two other things:
  1. The error "Could not find any HID devices" is popping up quite frequently. Is there something I need to do to fix that?
  2. How hard is it to set it up to use wi-fi? I'm hoping to show off this setup at the Canadian Library Association conference in a couple of weeks, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to get an ethernet connection. I have a USB wi-fi adapter that I've gotten to work with vanilla Raspbian, so I'm guessing it's theoretically possible.
For 1, it's because Mark set the "HIDtrigger" plugin to load automatically even though the majority of users have no HID device. What does that mean? Mark sells a foot pedal with his kits so it is enabled in his builds. You need to "spread configure" via ssh and uncheck it. I *think* you can also unload it from the gear menu on the upper right; I don't have it in front of me at the moment. Otherwise, it will complain forever until you connect a keyboard, mouse, gamepad, etc.

For 2, it's possible but not that easy to get WiFi working. I've gotten around this without having WiFi. A simple way (on Windows) is to use "Internet Connection Sharing". I "share" my WiFi connection to my ethernet port. Basically, it makes my ethernet port into something that the Pi can get an IP address from via DHCP. I don't actually use internet on the Pi, I just use it so that I can have nothing but an ethernet cable between myself and the Pi. If you're on other operating systems, this is also possible, I just don't know that much about it.
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