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Poster:
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Branko Collin |
Date:
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May 14, 2008 08:28:13am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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DIY orbital scanner |
For ages now I've been walking around with the idea of making a custom, cheap planetary scanner using mostly off-the-shelf parts, but I am not very handy, nor can I afford to spend gobs of money in trials, so I really could use some pointers.
The off-the-shelf parts would be a laptop w/ DVD-burner and a digital camera. Everybody has one of these. The custom bits would be the cradle, stand, lighting rig and glass plate. Originally my idea was to make this portable, and a cheap carrying case was included.
The camera is not the problem: although there aren't many, there are one or two consumer level (pocket) cameras that can be PC-controlled. My Canon Powershot A620 for instance can be set to take a picture every 7 seconds. That may sound slow, but is a lot faster than your average consumer model flatbed scanner. The time allows the camera to focus, the laptop to store the image to hard disk, and the operator to lift the plate and turn the page.
The advantage of such a portable system would be that you could take it to archives and demonstrate it to the archivists. I figure they would be less nervous about strangers handling their treasures if they could see with their own eyes how the process works.
The cradle is trivially easy to build. Instead my problems center on the lighting and on the glass plate. My problem with the latter is that it tends to reflect the light. My problem with the lighting is that it tends to be uneven. Making the light as ambient as possible does a lot to aleviate both problems, but tends to require a lot more attention to the exact set-up.
Can you guys give me some pointers on how you solved this with your planetary scanner?
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Poster:
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Locker Gnome |
Date:
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August 18, 2008 04:19:36pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: DIY orbital scanner |
Bounce the lighting off matte white reflectors.
Shape the reflectors to even the lighting.
The lights and reflectors need to be out of the view of the cameras reflected off the glass plate.
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