Slashdot Mirror
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 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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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.
I was going to mention WSH in response to grandparent as well, but since you got there first, I'll play devil's advocate.
/just as powerful/ as shell scripts is incorrect, I think.
WSH is actually more limited than traditional Unix shell scripts because the building blocks of WSH are ActiveX objects, whereas shell scripts are built from text filters. Text filters are generally much easier to write and debug than ActiveX objects (because they're simpler). Plus, it's fairly easy to use any shell scripts as a text filter for another shell script, whereas each WSH script is self-contained (ie, it cannot be used to build more complex WSH scripts) without going through a great deal of extra trouble.
So in short, yes WSH provides lots of functionality -- and it certainly provides the functionality required for the problem at hand. But to say that it's
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
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?
Yes he does, many copiers do this today (by copier I mean the large classic xerox sytle not the small 4 in 1 thingies), you simply plug in a network cable setup the ftp information and press scan.
He obviously wants several of these stations, but doesn't see the need in purchasing $10K+ copiers, instead wants to know if any small 4 in 1 or flatbed scanner can do this job.
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).
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.