DIY Book Scanner

• scantailor-advanced

  21 1,107 0.0 C++

  ScanTailor Advanced is the version that merges the features of the ScanTailor Featured and ScanTailor Enhanced versions, brings new ones and fixes.

I've used scan tailor in the past to convert a outboard motor manual to pdf, it's pretty powerful. I didn't have a proper setup, but my results still came out decently.

https://github.com/4lex4/scantailor-advanced

• pi-scan

  1 256 0.0 Python

  Pi Scan is a simple, robust capture appliance for book scanners. It runs on a Raspberry Pi 2.

  

I built one of these out of pine 2x4s and plywood. I thought it would be cheaper than buying one (I was wrong) but I'm also not a skilled woodworker and had to buy most of the tools.

It works quite well and I digitised dozens of textbooks I'd purchased and needed to reference but couldn't carry around every day while finishing my masters. My one had 2 Nikon mirrorless cameras controlled via Pi-Scan. https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan

I had a smaller toggle switch wired to the GPIO pins so I could click the scan next button without having to take my hands of the book. Once I got used to the workflow I could scan about 1000 pages per hour while watching Netflix.

I replaced it with a Czur scanner that isn't as good, but is a lot smaller and is good enough for my less demanding needs now that I'm not doing a masters degree :D

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• scantailor-universal

  12 168 4.1 C++

  ScanTailor Universal - a fork based on Enhanced+Featured+Master versions of ST

• spreads

  1 116 0.0 Python

  Modular workflow assistant for book digitization (by DIYBookScanner)

  

Spreads[0] is probably what you are referring to. Some backstory:

I saw the diybookscanner community - which at that point mostly had Daniel Reetz [1] as its active contributor- struggle with mechanical contraptions for triggering cameras and very little software experience. I built a simple proof of concept to reliably trigger cheap consumer cameras using software. I built it on CHDK[2], the Canon Hack Development Kit, alternative firmware for cheap consumer cameras. The proof of concept worked.

I then had a fairly large number of book scanner kits built and shipped mostly around the EU [3]. More of a work of love than a business really, even if it was formally under an llc umbrella. Johannes initially was just a customer. He wanted to build a better software solution, and within the spirit of the project did so as free software. I tried to support him at this as well as I could, setting up build infrastructure, trying to reel in more people, getting him some cameras to test, get the amazing CHDK people to port to new camera models, ...

Then real life intervened indeed.

Johannes, if you read this, I'm still grateful for the experience of having worked with a great developer like you!

[0] https://github.com/DIYBookScanner/spreads

• bookscan

  1 15 0.0 Shell

  Documentation and scripts for book scanning using free software tools

Right, step 1 -> get page images, step 2 -> author images into book file. While OCR is obviously useful for search, a rotated phone screen will let you comfortably read a pdf book just fine unless you are talking about something like a textbook, in which case you probably wanted a tablet anyway.

I wrote up a guide on the authoring process using FOSS tools for some Digital Humanities folks a couple years ago: https://github.com/wikey/bookscan

It gives some background on the problem and covers a Scantailor (page crop, rotate, deskew), pdfbeads (compression, book metadata) authoring workflow, with pdftk for some general odds and ends.

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