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The DIY Book Scanner
azoblue writes "Daniel Reetz did not want to lug around heavy textbooks, so he built a book scanner to create digital copies. '... over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that's fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes (PDF). To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he's done, software on Reetz's computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn't automated — you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it's fast and inexpensive.'"
Except for the lack of an automatic page-turner, Daniel's device is the same as one you can buy commercially for about $20,000 (http://www.treventus.com/bookscanner_pageturner.html).
He was wise to decide on manual page-turning.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
http://bkrpr.org/doku.php
Same thing, much cheaper (I built mine for ~150 USD.)
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
You must not have ever gone to college. A textbook for $15? Get real.
You haven't actually tried this have you? I've had various flatbed A4 scanners over the years, all at much higher resolution than a camera, and hence all got down-sampled afterwards for my display that is only 1.5MP anyway. Then I switched to using a phone camera with only a 2MP CCD, but a really good lens and decent macro mode (Sony-Ericcson Cybershot for those that are interested). As long as the focus was good it produced perfectly readable shots, and so it became my portable scanner. These days I mostly shot stuff at home so I have a 12MP DSLR to hand. It's huge overkill, and I massively down-sample stuff afterwards, but entirely readable. So your basic claim that this can't be done with a camera based on the resolution compared to a scanner is a complete load of bollocks. The focus of the lens tends to be the important issue.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
This is a market that relies on outrageous reproduction prices just like cd's used to. They are equally doomed. I know a LOT of college students who no longer buy books ... they rent them for free by buying them, shooting them, and returning them. It may take a couple of hours to do manually without a device like this, but $80 per hour is pretty good wages for a college student.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
The school is NDSU. Yes we (he) looked. No our library does not have one.
He has details of the reasons on his blog danreetz.com/blog
http://www.geocities.jp/takascience/lego/fabs_en.html
turning the pages and scanning is childs play
He may be scanning books to pirate them. However, I am a college student as well but trying to save money by pirating the books is not my objective.
I am in my 40's and my eyesight is not what it used to be. Here is why I would buy the books and scan them.
1. To be legal and comply with the law. I may very well by the books used, to get them as cheaply as possible. But I will buy them.
2. It is much lighter for me to carry one laptop around on campus, perhaps with copies of all the books I have used for all terms up to the current term.
3. I can zoom the pages to a comfortable size to read the text.
4. I now have the ability to search through the text.
5. I can use a text-to-speech reader to listen to the book, I can even make an mp3 of the book if I so desired.
To me it sounds like a bargain
vi +
See also the BookLiberator, a somewhat more compact cube-in-cradle design, that's also easy to build. Although soon you won't have to build your own: we're prototyping a manufacturable, flat-packed kit to sell from our online store; see questioncopyright.org/bookliberator for more about the project. It should be ready next year.
None of which is to detract from Reetz's accomplishment, of course. This renaissance in personal book scanners is going to make it easier for all of them, in the long run, especially as we can share the same open source software among all the scanners.
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
Based on the last 40 years of Disney legislation?
For-fucking-ever.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
I am well aware of how the Mars cameras work, having done a metric shitload of B&W "color" photography via filters myself.
And you, obviously, know exactly dick about not being an asshole.
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