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Cost Effective Scan-to-FTP Products?
An anonymous reader asks: "The law firm I work for uses a document routing system that picks up TIFFs or PDFs in server directory and processes them. We're using digital copiers with scan-to-FTP functionality to get them to the server's input directory. So, we need a cheap, easy to use unit for doing scan-to-FTP (or SMB). Copiers are just too expensive to sprinkle around a floor and PC-scanner solutions are just too big, complicated and time intensive for the users. I have found a couple possibilities doing web searches, but I'm still wondering what other Slashdot readers are using for this."
I have to say that I don't really know your requirements. You seem to need to digitise documents (and possibly OCR them) and then send them somewhere with a networking protocol. You mention FTP and SMB.
Start by breaking this down into components:
But your text indicates that you already have all of these components in place, so why are you looking for another solution? Is it just the cost?
Implied is the need to store the scanned documents in a database of some kind. Perhaps this should be considered in place of the "File Transfer" step.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I own a Canon LIDE-50 scanner (2 years old, runs from USB power, fast and precise). It was bundled with a small utility and has 4 buttons on its front side.
I can assign realy basic actions to each button with the utility:
For your problem, you can:
Your workflow becomes:
AWx
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Just use a simple bash script and SANE. If your scanner has adf then it's even better.
There's no reason to buy something off-the-shelf for this -- SANE's scanadf (with one of the drivers which can detect the scanner's start button press -- I just hacked up a solution for this with a slightly modified version of SANE's Fujitsu drivers and a less slightly modified version of the buttonpress detection tool out of SANE's "experimental" CVS module yesterday), in conjunction with a script for doing the upload, will do the trick. (Alternately, you could use NFS, SMBFS, DAVFS, etc. in place of FTP and just do a simple filesystem mount; I'd consider that more straightforward). I typically call scanadf with a filename based on the current timestamp -- so push the button and all the papers in your hopper come out as files named on the date/time the scan was started and the page# (based on ordering within the ADF). This means you need to have reasonable defaults for your scanning settings if you're going to do the single-button-press thing -- but for my purposes, 300DPI black-and-white works for just 'bout everything.
As an aside: One of my personal projects is building an setup that uses SANE, HylaFAX+iaxphone+asterisk and CUPS to scan items to a network drive (either shared space or, if they log in, password-protected space; this latter functionality is important for HR and other folks handling confidential documents); scan items to an outgoing fax; allow folks to print incoming faxes queued in their name and all that other nifty jazz. Don't know when I'll actually have something ready for release, though -- might be a bit, particularly as taking something I threw together as a once-off (which this will be, at first) and packaging it up for redistribution and reuse takes time.
they're called 'folders'. you put 'paper' in them.
they can be 'boxed' or put in 'filing cabinets'.
The opposite of progress is congress
He wants a scanner that you press a button and it scans and then send the scanned image to a preconfigured FTP/SMB address... so he can digitalize a lot of stuff in parallel and without using dedicated scanner/pc pairs.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Why don't you look into the possibility of getting some HP LaserJet 4345MFP printers? If your only going to be doing scanning, you can get the HP 9200C digital sender. You can link it with the DSS 4 software and make it do anything you want. Don't know if it's out of your price range, but I'm sure you could get it to do whatever you wanted to do. Yes, I do work with these devices on a daily basis. Not neccessarly with scan to FTP, but I know that the function is there.
Get a bunch of old surplus laptops - any P300 or higher would be fine. Turn off hibernation on the laptops so they stay on when closed. Get some flatbed scanners, place them on top of the laptops.
With any number of software packages, or some simple shell scripting in Linux, automate the scanning so that when they put in a document and press the 'Scan' button, it will do whatever you want. So, just make it scan into a format and copy it to the FTP server.
It shouldn't cost you more than $500 for every Laptop / Flatbed station you need.
This is why some companies need Linux/Unix, but don't realise it. As pointed out by that ImageMagick article earlier, sometimes having command-line tools rather than fancy GUI programs is extremely useful.
What is needed here is a shell script.
Windows does have (limited) scripting capabilities, but is severely lacking any good command-line programs.
+1, Informative AND +1, Insightful.
Solves the problem at hand, with exactly the requirements the original post stated: little space, and fast in time.
Kudos to you, my friend.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
A couple of years ago I got to play with the first model line of the HP digital sender. Even back then they were quite easy to use and were designed with professional use in mind (read: designed to cope with hundreds of pages, not just fiddling around with one or two). They are not exactly cheap, though (starting around $3000 ), but should still be less expensive than a larger copier. They are also quite handy sizewise. More info here (no, I'm neither HP nor do I have any interests otherwise in them):
7 9-64175-64404.html
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF02a/151
I believe that s/he is seeking an interface, much like a standalone print-server, a little box with a USB connection for the scanner and an RJ45 for the network which will take the image, put it into a reasonable format, and sent the file someplace (SMB or FTP, or whatever). This replaces the PC (or the $500 old laptop) and allows you to have a networked scanner for $200. Devices like the HP DIgital Sender are very nice, but too expensive for what this person wants. This would be a cool thing to have. I have seen more expensive versions, often with built-in storage, but nothing in the $100 range.
I recently acquired a "broken" HP OfficeJet for nothing. Turned out not to be very broken after all; I can't get any yellow ink to come out for love nor money {and it cost me £50 just to find that out}, but it does mono copies fine {though at £25 for an ink cartridge, I can't imagine I will be making many copies} and it's also supported under GNU/Linux.
You just need to get a scanner which is supported by SANE. That rules out a lot of the povvy cheap Windows-only ones. Write a BASH script to perform full-page scans, translate the format if required and dump the files into a directory. Configure an FTP daemon to see that directory. Easy!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Rather than have a separate PC server at every scan location, you could buy USB scanners like the Fujitsu ScanSnap or Xerox Documate and use USB over Ethernet hubs (example) to connect them as local hardware devices to a single PC server responsible for handling scan requests and routing the documents appropriately.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Over the past couple of years, I have purchased eight Dell 1600n laser printers (multi-function) to replace some older network printers in our small business. They have scanning capabilities, including autofeed of multiple docs (but not duplex scanning). These are stand-alone printers (no attending PC), so I needed a network scanning solution. Google revealed an open-source Perl script, dell1600n-net-scan.pl.
The script attaches to a printer via TCP/IP. From the printer, the user selects the Start Scan button, then from the printer's LCD, choose the server to send the scan to (multiple servers can simultaneously run the script and attach to the same printer). Presto, the scan is sent to the server. The Perl script has numerous options for processing the scanned doc, and could easily be hacked to include custom options such as post-processing, delivery, etc. This is a platform independent solution. It doesn't rely on a pile of Windows-only software and an attending PC to accomplish a scan.
The obvious catch is that this solution only works with Dell 1600n printers. The upside is that they are fairly cheap. I paid ~$300 including tax/shipping. They also provide copy and fax in addition to print and scan, so they simplified my office equipment management (1 machine and 1 toner cartridge per station versus multiple machines and toner cartridges).
For me, the biggest advantage to this solution is that I don't have to have a PC directly attached to the printer. I can drop a printer anywhere in our building and have network scanning capability.
Copiers are just too expensive to sprinkle around a floor and PC-scanner solutions are just too big, complicated and time intensive for the users.
So I'm not sure what you are looking for? There is no 'magic wand' that will scan reams of paper and put them on an FTP site short of a mechanical solution. Either you get a relatively expensive unit that does it quickly, or get cheap desktop solutions that are slow and a PITA to use, IMO.
As usual, you can have fast, cheap, or good - pick 2.
We have a Konica C350 bizhub that's quite reasonable and includes scan-to-ftp functions that result in it being no different than a copy solution - put the stack of papers on the feed tray, hit scan-to-ftp and it chews through them.
Also fully configurable as to what format the scan is - pdf, jpg, tif, and even some others i haven't used.
-Styopa
Heck, I imagine everybody has their own machine, why not save the system expense and just give out scanners like party favors?
My other car is a Popemobile
I work for GFC. They are the largest printer/copier provider in the northern mid-west. If you are in the area I would recommend you give our sales guys a call. They can get you a custom fit solution that does exactly what you need at a price you can aford. Check us out online at http://www.gflesch.com/
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
HP has a line called its "digital senders". They aren't cheap but they are standalone scanners (just hook up to a network - no computer needed) that are capable of scanning and sending directly to an email address or to a network share -- They also integrate with LDAP/active directory for lookups and are capable of high-volume scaning (ie. 50 pages at a time)
See, TWAIN integrates the GUI into the scanner driver -- so you can't have a shell script that kicks off a scan without the driver having specific support; ugh! The single-button scan solutions which are presently available for Windows are pretty much all proprietary to the individual scanner (far as I know), and not inherently pluggable.
This is why SANE is so damn useful even on Windows -- it provides an API for scanner access which is completely frontend-agnostic.
This is also why the folks talking about WSH are off-base -- even if WSH is extremely flexible, it doesn't get you away from the scanner-manufacturer-provided GUI which needs to be clicked through to start a scan, or (in the alternate) the proprietary mechanism used for kicking off the single-button-press scan mechanism.
They cost around $900 each, but the fi-5120C2 my company recommends to our customers are very nice scanners -- auto document feed (just throw stuff in the hopper), full-duplex full-color scanning at up to 25 pages per minute. (Mind you, you need a faster connection than USB1 for that full speed if you're going to be doing more than 200DPI black-and-white images. They support both USB2 and SCSI, but we've only tested USB2 -- but even with that you need to cut down the quality if you need the full 25 pages per minute).
..and their network document servers. Basically they have USB/SCSI for the scanner and ethernet porte x.htm
for the network. They can send to email, network drive etc.
In addition you can scan to browser or command the scanner through HTTP.
http://www.axis.com/products/document_servers/ind
I needed similar things to yours, but with HTTP capability. I and my customers
have been quite happy with this solution.
Considering you are looking for a product for a law firm I would recommend an easy to use product... Lawyers + Machines = Problem Check out the Panasonic DP-190 MFP. Much lower cost than the HP Digital Sender. Easier to use, easier to connect. Includes license free software that is VERY end user friendly. (Disclaimer: I sell this product, but also other brands as well. This is just the easiest for equipment challenged users) P.S.- Let me know here if you are interested in more info. Thanks!
We have three of these in my office.
We got three Dell servers (400SCs or something), and three HP multifunctions. Two run headless, and one has KVM and a wide-format scanner. Dells go on sale for insanely low prices, and HP plays well with Linux. If you print big docs, it's especially worth it because those $100 printservers are garbage and printers directly attached to the network cost waaay more than a cheap server.
We use some bash scripting and rsync to put them on our NAS, then interns to add metadata. Excluding the four foot scanner, but including the cabling, this setup ran our outfit less than $5000 CDN.
saned will allow remoting for any scanner supported by SANE, not just USB ones -- and it makes advanced scripting and such very easy. (Further, the SANE API is dirt simple to code for, so if there isn't already a tool that does what you're looking for it's easy to write or adopt one).
I have done this using faxes and an asterisk server.
You don't need IAX, SIP extensions using a cheap Grandstream ATA will do faxes.
I set up a number of extensions to receive faxes in the asterisk. You can call a script or other program on the received tiff file, which can file it in a different place depending on what extension received it.
The organization of your business decides how you will do that -- one extension per person, per case, per project, or whatever.
Fax machines are the cheapest way to get a scanner that has an automatic document feeder, that's why this solution will usually end up the lowest cost. However, you may have to also consider the cost of the ATAs. This may be an already absorbed cost if you used ATAs in the past and switched to regular VoIP phones, or if you have one of those Carrier Access ADIT 600s with a lot of analog lines.
Another consideration, is that you probably want to have at least one higher resolution color scanner for digitizing photos and other documents. What you do here is install linux on a cheap cast-off PC, and have it boot straight to a user, straight into graphical mode, bringing up whatever you write your interfaces in -- a browser coming up full-screen connected to localhost running some php scripts will work, so will a tcl/tk interface if that's how you get your pixels on. What you want this to do is allow a person to scan a document, preview, and then either trash it or select the "extension" to file it under, after which it runs the same filing script as the asterisk does. Keep in mind, if you have an automatic document feeder you want to be able to scan a bunch of stuff, scroll through thumbnails deleting a few and re-scanning those pages, and the file them as a batch.
only the "penny wise" side :-)
When the sole purpose of the laptops will be scan-and-ftp, a P300 is waaaay faster than any embedded thousand-dollar solution. Alas, it's possible that your embedded thousand-dollar solution is exactly that: a linux (or BSD/ECOS/QNX/whatever) running in a ColdFire (Motorola 68000) that grabs things via sane from the built-in scanner and FTPs it to the right place. A Mac Mini will cost something like US$ 500 -- which is US$ 100 more than the price of the combo P300 + flatbed scanner.
So, yes, I fail to see the "pound foolish" side of things.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We're looking at exactly this device, and we're happy that our Libraries have taken the plunge ahead of us. This system allows pretty much ad hoc scan-to-PDF(or TIFF or whatever)-to-server utility. They use it in an email fashion, because everyone has an email account. Scans show up as attachments. Very slick. The quality and file sizes produced were quite usable.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Axis of Sweden makes a Network Document Server that is a small (think mini ATX) linux appliance. It has a network port, an optional keyboard port, and a scsi or USB interface to drive multi-page scanners. Axis recommends which scanners work well and its most of the mutlipage scanners out there.
e x.htm
We use one of these in lieu of having a copier in our office, so I went with the more expensive one so that I could attach a more powerful scanner to it, but the less expensive USB multipage scanners from Xerox and Documate are pretty good.
http://www.axis.com/products/document_servers/ind
How would I do this as a "printer" - set up a script with a print queue and just have people print to it?
I've used an older version of this, the HP Digital Sender. It fits the bill except it comes with a heafty bill. Maybe their lease option is acceptable. Not worth the cash in my estimation, but they have a niche.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Possibly not ideal, but cheaper than copiers, the Lexmark T512 series of laser printers have an optional scanner attachment that allows scanning to ftp via ethernet. Auto sheet feeder as well. Quite a nice device.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
lego
You need one of those. I was looking for similar solution that wouldn cost over 1000 USD andonly scaner i forund in the range of 500 USD is this.
= 40
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/v3__wgroup.asp?wg
Scans a page form the feeder in about 4 seconds and dose both sides in one pass.
Does directly to pdf. So they can be shared over net easily. Does take max about 20 pages.