Oversized davidlandin Model

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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GPHS2
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by GPHS2 »

I picked up a 2 pack of Utilitech Natural Daylight 100 watt 1600 Lumens and 5000k bulbs at Lowes and when I get back from my road trip in a few weeks I am going to try these on our scanner unit. I am hoping the 5,000k, Natural Daylight 100 watts each will give me enough light and also keep it as close to daylight as I can probably get.
58a.jpg
The spotlight type bulbs I was using gave me dark areas on the ledgers I was scanning and will be worse when I get to scanning the newspaper archives. Not sure how these will work but when I get back I will try them and post a review.
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by GPHS2 »

I moved the scanning unit to our local Knights of Columbus meeting hall this past week because we were having a writer and photographer come to the historical society meeting to take pictures of the unit and get information for a newspaper story he wanted to write about it.

Here is a link to the story. I am not sure how long the link will work so if you have an interest in it check it out soon.

http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-n ... n-Pittston

Ron was sure to mention the forum but the writer didn't include the web address for it. However, it did make people aware that there is a forum for how to make the units so they should be able to find it through a Google search.

We also had another reporter and photographer stop over to my house today and I had moved the unit to my sun room as the lighting was better for her to take photos of the unit.

Again, we mentioned the forum and that we got our ideas from the David Landin model. We aren't sure exactly how she will write the article up but we did want to give the forum and David credit because both helped make this project a reality. I am not sure how soon the article will run and I will probably be on vacation when it does but maybe I can get Ron to post a link to it or save me a copy and I will scan it and post it here.

Mike
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by daniel_reetz »

Great work and a great article. Really cool to see what you have done, and I hope, in time, we can take it even further.
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by RFaraday »

Hey, Mike's famous!

http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/book-s ... -1.1655556

The reporter that interviewed us last week included a video of Mike in action in the online version of the article! Glad to see that the DIY Book Scanner forum made it into the article as well as designer David Landin :o , although she misspelled your last name as Lander, David. I'm so sorry. :oops:

A few errors in the story - we didn't receive the scanner last October, we just got it a few weeks ago. And we do have 33 of the 150 volumes completed, but they were done using a conventional scanner, not the book scanner.

At any rate, Mike and his wife are off to beautiful and warm New Orleans and a nice cruise while I'm stuck here in freezing Pennsylvania working on historical society stuff. Life isn't fair. :(

Thank you again everyone for the continued help and support with the scanner. When Mike returns we do need to take a second look at the platen and it's affect on photo quality vis-a-vis text clarity.

Ron
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by davidlandin »

Don't worry about the journalistic mistake about my name Ron.

I really liked the article and the moving images of your giant scanner. Really impressive, and it seems to have scaled up really well. Did you have any major difficulties in the scale-up process?

Also people have been asking me on the forum about different sized platens. Did you do a straight multiply up to get all your dimensions? or how did you calculate the relative sizes?

What cameras did you decide to use in the end? I am also interested to know how you configured the CHDK to fire both cameras at once. Also have you looked at getting a live image on computer screen( or 2 screens) as you go along? Do you know if that is possible with CHDK?

Any way - very well done to you both. And although you are freezing and Mike is sunning himself down south you both deserve a medal! :idea: :idea:

David
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by RFaraday »

David,

I wouldn’t say there were any really difficult problems with the scale up. Naturally there were some things that had to be changed, particularly with the positioning of the pivoting arm, but other than that it wasn’t that bad at all.

Regarding the platen, I’ll have to defer that question to Mike or to the fabricators if Mike isn’t aware.

Mike ended up going with the Canon 2200 cameras and they are performing very well thus far. We do have some legibility issues to work through, but they’re more a product of the lighting and the faded ink on the pages. We may need to try that XT plastic that you suggested. As far as the CHDK, that’s definitely a question for Mike and his nephew. I wasn’t present when they programmed them and have zero experience in that area. No, I don’t believe Mike has gotten around to getting a live image on the laptop screen.

Thank YOU, David. For designing such a useful product then making it extraordinarily easy to build by shooting the videos and posting them to Youtube. And thanks to everyone else here who has been helpful in this endeavor. And I must thank Mike at least one hundred times or more as he has really taken this project under his arm and executed it far better than I know I could have.

Warmest Regards,
Ron
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by GPHS2 »

Hi all, I am back from my road trip/cruise and ready to get back to work on this. I actually got back last week but our 4 kids were in for the Easter holiday so I didn't get a chance to do anything on the scanner.

I saw David had a few questions and wanted to get to them. I can't say much about the scaling up process as we had a local factory that made the actual frame for our oversized scanner. We actually went with the Canon A2200 cameras as we were sure they worked with CHDK and could be triggered remotely. After you put CHDK on your camera card you can set an option to Enable Remote Trigger and that lets you push a switch which sends a small electrical charge through the USB cable to the USB ports of the cameras to mimic the half push of the shutter button and then when you release the switch it is like pushing the buttons all the way down and that triggers the cameras to take the pictures. I have it set up that both camera USB cables run into a foot switch. I used the USB cables that came with the cameras and just bought two small USB hubs that plug into an outlet on one end and on the other end it has a slot for the USB cable to plug in. I got them for $2.75 each on Ebay. I have pictures of them in an earlier post on this topic. I then have both of those USB hubs plugged into an extension that runs to my foot switch. The foot switch I got on Amazon for about $33.00 including s&h. There are cheaper ones but since this may be used by other people I wanted one that we did not have to cut and splice any electrical cables. This one has a receptical on the back where I plugged the extension into the foot switch. This leaves my hands free and when I am ready I just push the foot switch and when I release it a charge is sent to the cameras and the photos are taken.

I was really having a problem figuring out the lighting. I recently bought two 1600 Lumen light bulbs from Lowes that I mentioned in an earlier post. I am still playing around with the setup but these bulbs help the lighting a lot.

Once I figure everything out I will post a complete set of photos showing the entire setup including lighting and foot switch in hopes it may help others. I don't want to post it yet until I have everything working the way we want it.

One thing I have a problem with is Scan Tailor. Because these books are so big and not in the best shape, I often need to adjust their position on the scanner so when I try to post process the images in Scan Tailor there is too much movement between the images to be able to apply Scan Tailor to them with much success. I am going to try moving the books less on future scans but I can't eliminate all movement. I may have to process the images in more than one pass. That is something I will work on when I get the lighting worked out correctly.

I met with Ron today and he was asking me if I tried hooking the scanner up to the computer so I could view the images before I take the pictures. I am not sure how I would view both images on the screen at the same time without having some type of split screen program. Plus, then I would have to trigger the cameras through the computer as you can only have one USB cable in each camera. So that means the computer would have to be used to trigger each camera. I am pretty sure it can be done but at this point I am not sure I want to spend time figuring that out until I get some books scanned and being transcribed.

I will keep you updated on our progress.
GPHS2
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by GPHS2 »

Hi All, I am sorry this posting is so long overdue. Life has just been very hectic. However, I did want to let you know how things are going for us with the oversize scanner. I have actually been scanning some of the minute books and with the post production work to improve the images taken with the cameras we have been able to have several people working on doing the transcriptions. I have about 10 books done already and would be scanning more except for the fact that we have gotten an opportunity to scan 65 years of local newspapers. We are now in the process of scanning every page of every issue of these papers. Thankfully, they only published on Sunday for most of those 65 years and only for a few years they also published a Thursday edition. I figure we have somewhere near 170,000 pages to scan. I actually trained another person to do the scanning and I will probably do the post production work.

We even were invited by a local church to digitize several of their record books and they just loved the results. They were thrilled. We also recently did several record books for another local church and they liked the results so much they told us we can com back and digitize all their record books. We are even considering building another scanner to allow more people to work on these projects with us.

Since the early years of these newspapers are in horrible condition it is hard to keep them aligned in the center of the scanner where the platen comes down and often they are twisted different ways slightly. So I have become a huge fan of YASW as it saves me a lot of time in re-aligning the pages. As we get to the later years this will not be as much of a problem but many of these older pages are torn and brittle and bent so it is more difficult to center them under the platen. But YASW helps a lot with that problem.

This forum has been instrumental in helping the historical society get this project going. We want you to know how much we appreciate your help. Our setup hasn't changed. I listed everything we used in earlier posts and we are still using those items.

Thanks again to David Landin for his input and design and also to the author of YASW. They both deserve a ton of credit for all they have done to help us DIY people make these scanners.

Mike and Ron
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by davidlandin »

Hi Mike and Ron

Thanks for your encouraging words about the design. And I'm pleased to hear that the scanner is getting used well. You have a lot of work coming in - great! I just had another look at the newspaper video again, and your machine looks great.

Have you had any snags or problems? How have you handled those?

And also I wonder what you are using for the counterbalance weights? - on the video there didn't seem to be any weights, so I wonder if you have found a different solution?

David Landin
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Re: Oversized davidlandin Model

Post by GPHS2 »

David, you deserve lots more credit for coming up with that design...

There is actually a heavier pipe used in the very back of the setup that serves as a weight. This way we didn't have to have an extra weight to worry about. I think they said they put a solid iron bar back there so it is heavier than the front of the unit. I guess just sliding an iron bar inside of the back bar would have worked much like you did with one bar where you put another one inside of it so it would not bend when you pushed down on the platen.

Otherwise, we have been having great success with out build. The Canon A2200 cameras are working out ok too. If we had more money available we might have gotten better cameras but these are getting the job done. We may update the cameras down the line as we get more money.

We are very happy with everything and really appreciate all the help we have received here.
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