Page-turning Book Scanner Roundup

October 2, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

[Daniel] at diybookscanner.org posted a roundup of the best automatic book scanner builds to date. A lot of the comments on our last coverage of book scanners were summed up by [Spork] with, “No automatic page turning = no use.” Turning a page in a book with a robot is really hard, though, and these builds do a really amazing job at automating very tedious work.

First up is [jck57]’s servo actuated auto scanner. From the video, this build is very good and we caught it skipping only one page. Check out the video in action and the overview.

Next up is the Berlin Hackerspace c-base’s vacuum box scanner. The video shows a large diamond-shaped box with a vacuum cleaner hose attached to the top. The box is pressed down into the binding of the book where the vacuum picks up the next page. The build is a manual version of this very expensive machine, but does have the bonus of not poking a centuries-old book with robotic manipulators.

[dtic] was one of the first people to look into automatic page turning. His prototype (video here) uses servos, but has a very simple construction. The downside is that the book can only scan one side of the book at a time; to get other side, the user would have to turn the book upside down and scan it again.

Project Gado was an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign whose goal was to develop a scanner to archive photos at Johns Hopkins University. The build used a vacuum-powered suction cup to lift pages onto a flatbed scanner. It’s a lot slower than some of the other builds, but we think there would be less of a risk of skipping a page.

As for processing the images captured by a digital camera, [Steve]’s book scan wizard handles a lot of the necessary post processing tasks. Converting everything to a PDF, changing the DPI, and putting all the pages in order can be done with [Steve]’s app. Download here.

Turning a page of a book is a very hard problem – books are designed for hands, not grippers. If you’ve got a book scanner build you’d like to show off, send it in on the tip line. We’ll be sure to put it up.

Star Wars Imperial March Played By Dual Floppy Drives

October 2, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 36 Comments

Although many have made some sort of music with improvised electronics, few sound as cool as this Imperial March from Star Wars played by two floppy drives. According to [Pawel], “It’s nothing new” and quite simple. This may be true as we’ve featured an Imperial March-playing floppy drive here before, but it was only one drive. Although it may not be the London Symphony Orchestra, the two drives together sound quite good!

According to him, the FDD has a fairly simple interface. To move the head, one simply needs to pull the DRVSB pin low and then activate the STEP pin on a falling edge. This will make the head move one direction dependent on the DIR pin state. In this case, an ATMega microcontroller is moving everything. An explanation of the pins used in this hack can be found here.

Although it may look like an intimidating hack on the surface, something like this might be a neat project to try with some old hardware and an Arduino or other controller! [Pawel] did have the idea to hook up a 5 1/4″ and 8″ drive to make a full FDD orchestra, so we can’t wait to see what he comes up with! Continue reading “Star Wars Imperial March Played By Dual Floppy Drives” →

Bread Head Makes AVR Programming A Snap

October 2, 2011 by Mike Nathan 18 Comments

bread_head_quick_avr_programming_header

[Quinn] over at Blondihacks has been working with AVR microcontrollers a lot recently, and wanted a quick way to program the ATtiny13a (her current AVR of choice) while the chip is still seated in a breadboard.

To speed up code revision and testing, she built a small programming header that she calls the Bread Head. The device is wonderfully simplistic, consisting of little more than snappable header pins and a bit of upside-down protoboard.

She soldered six headers to the top (formerly the bottom) side of the board, while a set of eight oversized headers were soldered to the opposite side of the programmer. Small bits of wire were soldered in to connect all of the appropriate pins together before [Quinn] slipped the header snugly over the top of the ATtiny and gave it a quick test. Everything worked perfectly, so she slathered in in epoxy for sturdiness and called it a day.

She says that the programmer works so well that she’s likely to make a similar header for other common AVRs too.

Sustainability Hacks: Thin Client Server

October 2, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 44 Comments

It’s not environmentally friendly, but most of us run a small home server 24 hours a day. A small server is a useful tool to have that unfortunately wastes a lot of energy. [kekszumquadrat]’s thin client home server is actually a passable LAMP box that doesn’t draw a ton of power.

[kekszumquadrat] started looking at the SheevaPlug when beginning his quest but was a little concerned about the power supply failing. Looking for alternatives, he ran across a lot of cheap thin clients on eBay. The price was right and everything runs Linux, so a few days later he had an HP t5710 thin client on his doorstep.

This little computer came a copy of an embedded version of XP on a flash drive connected to the IDE port. Ditching that “operating system”, [kekszumquadrat] connected a USB hard drive and installed Arch Linux. After a few updates and package installations, he had a useful machine connected to the Internet.

Compared to the 7 Watts the SheevaPlug draws, the 15 W thin client is an energy hog. Compared to our improvised servers, [kekszumquadrat] is doing a remarkable job. Recycling old hardware never hurt anyone, either.

Getting The Lead Out Of The Arduino Runtime

October 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 25 Comments

mhvlib_arduino_efficiency_runtime

Ah, the Arduino.

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that part of its accessibility comes at the expense of speed and efficiency. We honestly like the platform as well as all of the others out there, because we believe that everything has its proper place and purpose. The crew over at Make, Hack, Void think that the Arduino dev boards are well and good, but that the core of the Arduino runtime could use some improvement.

They have taken it upon themselves to dig deep into the code and make some of the improvements that many advanced Arduino users have been clamoring for. Their MHVLib is an efficiency oriented runtime library which works on all AVR microcontrollers, whether they be standalone uCs or Arduino-branded hardware.

They have changed the way that the Arduino handles pin and port information, as well as how object and buffers are allocated in memory. Their code still relies on an Arduino-style bootloader, though they recommend Optiboot since it’s about a quarter of the size of the Arduino version.

There’s a complete list of what has been implemented available on their site, and you can grab the code via their GIT repository if you want to give it a try yourself.

Spamming A Label Printer With #cookiehammer

October 1, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

[John] has always loved stock ticker machines. These machines are highly collectible, so short of finding one that wasn’t hurled from a Manhattan skyscraper in 1929, a stock ticker is out of reach for the casual enthusiast. There is another way to get a stock ticker-like device though: hack a label printer to print out stuff from Twitter.

The build is really quite simple. A Dymo thermal label printer was modified to accept standard 2.25″ point of sale receipt paper. Now that the printer can shoot out line after line of text, [John] wrote a little bit of Ruby code using a Twitter API, RMagick for graphics processing and a Dymo printer driver.

Every 30 seconds, the code does a Twitter search for a specific hashtag and prints those tweets. #cookiehammer was the first thing that came to mind, so it stuck. Right now there’s a few tweets for #cookiehammer, but we expect [John] will have to put a new roll of paper in his printer fairly soon.

It may not be as informative as a stock ticker machine, but we think [John]’s twitter printer build sure beats watching CNN. Check out the walk through after the break.

Continue reading “Spamming A Label Printer With #cookiehammer” →

Incredibly Cheap Upcycled Cargo Bike

October 1, 2011 by Mike Nathan 27 Comments

diy_lastenrad_cargo_bike

What has two wheels, is made from five different bikes, and can carry all of your stuff for miles and miles on end?

[Paul Blue’s] DIY Lastenrad, that’s what. (Google Translation)

A Lastenrad is a cargo bike where the load sits in front of the rider rather than being towed behind. [Paul] wanted one for hauling things around town, and rather than buy one, he built one of his own. One thing we particularly like about this build is that the bike borrows parts from five other bicycles that were in various states of disrepair. That kind of re-use is something we can really get behind.

[Paul] estimates the total build cost to be under 50 Euros, which is fantastic considering how useful his Lastenrad is. After logging about 100Km on the bike, he says that it handles quite well, and that even when fully loaded it is extremely easy to make his way about town.

Continue reading to see a video of the bike’s first test ride.

Continue reading “Incredibly Cheap Upcycled Cargo Bike” →