First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Built a scanner? Started to build a scanner? Record your progress here. Doesn't need to be a whole scanner - triggers and other parts are fine. Commercial scanners are fine too.

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chennes
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Oct 2013, 12:44
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: US
Location: Norman, OK

First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by chennes »

I just finished the non-electronic portion of my first scanner build. It's based on the (revised) "New Standard Scanner" from daniel_reetz and clemd973. Things mostly went as expected, though I think I'm going to replace the bottom set of drawer glides with a nicer pair one of these days, I don't like the way the cheap ones settle in at one end (designed to keep drawers closed).

For amusement I recorded a time lapse video of the construction process:
http://youtu.be/PlYHpZ595gU

Now I need to decide on lighting and cameras. I was hoping to start out with a single camera setup (obviously I've already got a camera), but I am not sure how to mount it and the lights to eliminate the various reflections off the plexiglass.
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chennes
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Oct 2013, 12:44
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: US
Location: Norman, OK

Re: First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by chennes »

I made a few changes, and made my first successful complete scan.

First, here's the actual setup I'm using: just a single camera for now, I rotate the book around and do the opposite page in another pass. Obviously this doubles the scan time, but it lets me use my nice camera for all the pages.
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I went low-tech for the lighting setup, since I'm not trying to do preservation work here, just digitize my book collection for personal use. These are just Home Depot cheapo under-cabinet lights.
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I was sort of hoping that the soft-close mechanism on the platen rails would support the weight of the platen in an elevated position for storage, but the platen weighs just over ten pounds, so it was not to be. I added the same sort of hook and eye setup that clemd showed in the previous build discussion:
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I used spray-adhesive to attach black shelf liner to the book support to prevent the book from moving around: this works great, I'm very happy with it so far.
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I used the nicest draw glides that Home Depot had in stock, and attached them to Ash runners to make sure that they would stand up to the wear of scanning my collection. Most of the scanner is constructed of Southern Yellow Pine, with just a few high-wear areas made of hardwoods.
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I also replaced the book support glides with nicer ones, since I didn't like the action of the cheaper ones. The less expensive models let the drawer sink a little bit when it slides all the way in as a sort of keep-closed mechanism, but that doesn't work very well in this application.
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This is currently set up in my windowless garage, so once I turn the main overheads off spurious reflections and shadows aren't an issue. I used ScanTailor to do my scan processing, and Acrobat to do the final assembly and OCR, all of which worked perfectly, as far as I'm concerned. What I wound up with certainly isn't "preservation-quality," but it's definitely "read books on the plane" quality.
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daniel_reetz
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Re: First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by daniel_reetz »

Love your time-lapse video, and great build. On New Standards, the easy way to get rid of reflections is to position the camera normal to the platen surface, and then lift the lights up high until their glare image disappears. If you can see the camera in the platen image, shield it from the overhead light and it should also disappear.
abmartin
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Joined: 15 Sep 2010, 15:33
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: USA
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Re: First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by abmartin »

Very nice build! Every line and angle is so crisp and square. I made one a few years ago. (Not really sure how many) It's held up well over the years. I've done more than 75k pages, and the drawer slides still do their job pretty well. I really appreciate the design, since it hits a great balance between simplicity of build and complexity of structure.

I raised my lights about 10 inches more than the original design specs and found that to be enough to elimate most of the reflections. I also hacked together a simple light shroud of pvc pipes and wal-mart curtains which had a substantial effect on image quality, but since you are photographing in a dark garage, that's probably not necessary.

The platen is very thick. I hope that it won't be too much of a problem getting deep enough into the gutter. A good number of books that I have done need one much thinner. Unfortantely, using thinner materials does seriously reduce platen rigitity. (Hence the big design concept shift on Dan's more recent work)

Have fun scanning! Software workflow is an ever-evolving thing here too.
chennes
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Oct 2013, 12:44
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: US
Location: Norman, OK

Re: First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by chennes »

With the current lighting I don't have any problems with reflections, although there are various ideas swirling around my head regarding the lighting, so we'll see how it goes down the road.

I am a public librarian by day, and mentioned this project to my boss, whose eyes lit up: "we could digitize the genealogy archives!!" she said. So... the goals of the project are shifting a bit, and now portability becomes an issue. My short-to-medium term goal is to have the platen raise/lower action and camera trigger be semi-automatic, so that a user sitting in front of the machine turns the page and presses a button, which causes the platen to lower, the cameras to trigger, and the platen to raise back up. Rinse and repeat.

So, a few design tweaks later:
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I've switched to a less expensive (and lighter!) point-and-shoot camera, one of which I had sitting in a drawer and the other I picked up on eBay. It's a low-end model without much in the way of bells and whistles, so I anticipate upgrading at some point in the future. To that end I went with a servo-driven mechanical trigger that will be easy to adapt to other point-and-shoot systems without too much headache:
Trigger mechanism.png
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The camera is mounted on T-track sliding rails that allow only vertical movement (relative to the page), and the whole system is designed to reduce keystoning and hopefully minimize the amount of post-processing required.
Camera Mount.png
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T-Track.png
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Finally, I discovered that one of the fortuitous coincidences of my design is that the holding mechanism intended to prevent scratches to the plate turned out to be unnecessary. The platen is actually held a fraction of an inch away from the surface of the book-holding jig in its fully-lowered position by the set of screws that hold the plexiglas onto the braces.
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Getting rid of that mechanism clears up the vertical support strut, which will shortly be receiving a pulley mechanism (I think) to raise and lower the plate by motor.
chennes
Posts: 5
Joined: 11 Oct 2013, 12:44
E-book readers owned: iPad
Number of books owned: 2000
Country: US
Location: Norman, OK

Re: First Build: "New Standard Build" Timelapse

Post by chennes »

I got a quick and dirty Arduino script put together to demonstrate the action of the trigger mechanism:


Ultimately having a microcontroller driving the camera triggering gives a lot of flexibility in terms of various sorts of automatic and semi-automatic triggering schemes, so I'm looking forward to playing with it.
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