DIY Book Scanner

Hi guys

I'm sorry to start out my carreer as a forum member here (long time lurker) with a bit of a pessimistic post, but here goes.

First of all – I have boundless respect and admiration for the guys developing SpreadPi and Spreads, I think you're doing revolutionizing work here and I can't thank you enough for that.

About six months ago I jumped the gun and bought a kit from DiyBookscanner.eu. It took a bit of time to built but around a month later I had finally put it all together. But ever since then (for 5 months) I have been struggling to make the software part function properly. I have tried just about every suggestion and both a v1 and v2 Pi – I've had the helpful guys at diybookscanner.eu help me reflash the pi with a fresh installation, I tried my own hand at installing the thing many, many times as well. And yet here I am, 5 months later and still no success and to be honest I've kind of lost hope in the thing. Everyone else seems to make the thing work on here/on Github and I guess this is just a post to hear some success stories/confirmation that this wasn't a crazy waste of money/time. Is it possible – is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Oh – and thanks to the guys on Github for answering some of my questions/issues on there.

Best regards

I have had the most luck using the image at:

http://tenrec.builders/pi/archivist-2m.zip

And plug a mouse and keyboard and monitor directly into the Pi.

What specific problem are you having? What are the cameras?

Improving the robustness of the capture process is an important project that I am actively working on right now. I will be posting something here on the forum when I have it ready.

-D

I have had a similar experience.
For a user, imo, robust hard- and software at the moment of purchase are a basic requirement. I appreciate the effort, help and information I have received while trying to get my device to work, though. But I don't believe these efforts or my investing of time, money and effort will yield anything more than a learning experience at this point. Thanks for the link to the image. Am I correct in gathering from the comment that the 'bring your own device' configuration, with the router, has been discarded?

barth, I am personally moving away from the bring-your-own-device idea. But I haven't seen any opinion on the matter by Johannes, the author of Spreads.

The 'plug these things in and work' mode is much easier to get going for people who don't know how to administer a network or use a Linux command line. Which is the reason I like that mode.

The image I linked to works both ways. You can put it on the network or use it standalone.

-D

duerig wrote:barth, I am personally moving away from the bring-your-own-device idea. But I haven't seen any opinion on the matter by Johannes, the author of Spreads.

The 'plug these things in and work' mode is much easier to get going for people who don't know how to administer a network or use a Linux command line. Which is the reason I like that mode.

The image I linked to works both ways. You can put it on the network or use it standalone.

-D

Thank you for your work and clarifications. I'm curious about the image.

For the exact same reason as Datamads I'm also very interested in a simpler/more reliable/plug-and-play type solution.

I assembled an Archivist kit last April with all the recommended components and still have yet to get it operational because of software side issues. I and a rotating cast of IT professionals at my maker space spent evenings over 3 months trying to get it to work on two Pis and a Pi2 in various configurations -- w/ and w/o SpreadPi. The best we got was a couple of pre-processed images and then a crash. After so many failures, I stopped pushing it forward. I'm under some pressure by the community to get it working or get it out of the space, but have a hard time motivating to start the fight again. What started as a fun maker challenge now feels like an unwelcome and costly chore. I'd be happy to buy my way out now and invest some additional money on a plug-and-play solution that would make my Archivist more than an expensive kinetic sculpture.

So, Jonathon, I'm also eager to hear of any headway you make. I'll probably take one more run at it with the build you posted above before shelving it again.

I am looking for testers. So send me an email at help at tenrec dot builders if you are interested in helping me get to a public release.

-D

Hi guys

Sorry for taking so long in answering your replies. At first it got my hopes up again – I tried duerigs image again but still got killed by the "object of type 'NoneType' has no len()" that has been a problem all along and in every version and flash I've tried... But thanks again for helping me again guys... And Duerig - that sounds amazing. I'd love to try.

Here is a full pastebin of my error log btw. http://pastebin.com/9Ykh39Et