Bookscanner

Timeline

2009

In 2009, Daniel Reetz published a tutorial on how to make a book scanner from cheap cameras and trash. His initial tutorial touched off a firestorm of interest and launched this community (http://diybookscanner.org).

2012

Mark van den Borre establishes diybookscanners.eu. It is a for-profit spinoff of his involvement in the DIYbookscanner.org community. diybookscanners.eu sells book scanners, both as a kit and preassembled.

2015

In 2015, Daniel retired from the project, but the community (http://diybookscanner.org) lives on. We are still producing new designs and new software. Step by step we are making it easier for anyone around the world to produce high quality scans of the history they hold most dear.
http://diybookscanner.org

https://github.com/DIYBookScanner/spreadpi
Latest commit 656374c on May 26, 2015

People

Daniel Reetz

http://diybookscanner.org/

Ivo Ielitis

Mark van den Borre

Hardware

Essential scanner demo: VIDEO of Mark Van den Borre demoing the system
Assembly manual (Mark Van Den Borre EU edition) https://github.com/markvdb/diybookscanner.eu/blob/master/mechanical_assembly.md (Apr 29, 2016)
Design of parts of the scanner
Assembly manual: Archivist Scanner by Daniel Reetz http://diybookscanner.org/archivist/
Scanner Kit Assembly: Archivist Guide by Tenrec Builders http://tenrec.builders/archivist-guide.html
Alignment of camera http://tenrec.builders/archivist/camera-guide.html

Software

Spreads

spreads is a tool that aims to streamline your book scanning workflow. It takes care of every step: Setting up your capturing devices, handling the capturing process, downloading the images to your machine, post-processing them and finally assembling a variety of output formats.
Along the way you can always fine-tune the auto-generated results either by supplying arguments or changing the configuration beforehand, or by inspecting the output and applying your modifications.
spreads is meant to be fully customizable. This means, adding support for new devices is made as painless as possible. You can also hook into any of the spread commands by implementing one of the available plugin hooks or even implement your own custom sub-commands.
Source: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/spreads

~~http://diybookscanner.org/archivist/indexee7f.html~~ ... older version of readthedocs

spreads is a tool that aims to streamline your book scanning workflow. It takes care of every step: Setting up your capturing devices, handling the capturing process, downloading the images to your machine, post-processing them and finally assembling a variety of output formats.
http://diybookscanner.org/archivist/indexee7f.html?page_id=846

Before reading this page, please keep in mind that it is necessarily out-of-date.

Installing spreads: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/spreads

"features"

Shoot with both cameras simultaneously, directly storing the images in a single directory on your computer in the right order.
Automatically rotate the images and optionally adjust the white balance (if a gray card has been used during shooting).
Create a ScanTailor project file that the user can customize as desired.
Generate PDF and DJVU files with hidden text layers
Interactive Wizard-Mode that handles the full workflow from image capturing to post-processing, either from the command-line or via graphical interface.

AM: Spreads version 0.5.0 seems to be on the pad

SpreadPi

https://github.com/DIYBookScanner/spreadpi

Raspberry Pi image tailored for running a DIYBookScanner with the spreads software suite.

Pi Scan

Pi Scan is a simple and robust camera controller for book scanners. It was designed to work with the Archivist book scanner. For questions or help, visit the forum or email help at tenrec dot builders.

https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan

Aymeric: "Pi Scan is stable at the moment, meaning its development is less active than when it was started two years ago, but unlike spreads it seems much more mature. It is also the recommended backend for the archivist. It is also what powers the Archivist Quill book scanner (the one with the RPi touch screen).

There is however a major difference with spreads, which I personally like very much because it's very UNIXy. By that I mean that unlike spreads that tries hard to be a web interface, a CLI, a Python library, a plugin host for post-processing, a project database, and also a book metadata manager, Pi Scan does only one thing, it tries to take the best possible shots and save them to an external SD Card, restart the camera if they crash, and resuming work if done in several sessions."

https://vimeo.com/150385938

Backup Image from our diybookscanner

Feb 2018: We made a backup image of the pi as delivered from Mark vdb...

http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/~aroidl/scannerpi.img.xz

Quotations

It's hard to build things without a manual. (Natasha)

Five years ago we built our first book scanner from salvage and scrap. Book digitization was the domain of giants — Microsoft and Google. Commercial book scanners cost as much as a small car. Unless you chose to destroy your books in sheet-feed or flatbed scanners, there was no safe and affordable way to preserve the contents of your bookshelf on your e-reader. Collectively, we tried to fix that. Over 2,000 people contributed more than 350 designs and thousands of lines of code at diybookscanner.org. The result is the Archivist — the VW Beetle of book scanners — cheap, durable, and tremendously effective. It’s open source and made with the simplest materials possible, like plywood, bungees, and skateboard bearings (Daniel Reetz)

Links

http://diybookscanner.org/

http://diybookscanner.org/ Jonathon Duerig and Scann
http://lusis.eu/ company of Marc

http://diybookscanner.eu

https://github.com/markvdb/diybookscanner/wiki General wiki