Follow up on the Atiz BookDrive DIY scanner

Today I got the scanner working and taking pictures in 30 minutes today. I aligned the cameras, set the time delay, and started scanning.

I cannot express how impressed I am with this set up. I admit I was not expecting the machine to take pictures based on a time delay, so that you could just turn the pages and let the machine go. This little feature which exploits the time delay of the cameras, increases output to 700+ pages an hour easy.

The cradle adjusts back and forth due to pressure and nothing else. It slides, and whichever side of the book is thickest, it moves in that direction. This means that you don’t have to constantly keep readjusting the cradle as a thick book moves through its pages. It also means that you can scan a book with a spine that is over 4 inches (which is a limit for the Kirtas machines). The cameras can be set to autofocus before each shot, which means that you don’t have to stop to fix the focus if it gets off.

I also played around with the image processing software that comes with the machine. It seems simple, and it does a good job of processing the images, although it does it slowly.

I haven’t yet tried the PDF creator yet, and I still don’t know if it comes with OCR capabilities. I’ll be out next week on vacation, so it will be another week and a half before I can answer that question.

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