LEGO Book Scanner

December 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s a good one from a few years back. [Muranushi] built a scanner to automatically scan an entire book. LEGO is used as the primary building material. A book is placed on a LEGO balance (inset photo) with a counterweight that eases the work of raising and lower the book. The book is lowered, a LEGO carriage moves across the book to turn the page, the book is raised to the glass of an upside-down scanner and scanned into a laptop.

It seems LEGO and imaging devices are a great match. Most of the parts used here are from LEGO Technical set 8485, a set that comes with motors and a motor controller seen above, on the floor behind the computer. We’ve embedded some video after the break of a book in the midst of the scanning process. Continue reading “LEGO Book Scanner” →

Slide Digitizer

December 1, 2009 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

Remember slide shows? The ones that used a carousel projector and real slides? [Brian] wanted to bring his slides into the digital age but was spending far too much time scanning in the 35mm relics. He set to work and built a rapid slide digitizer using a projector, a DSLR, and a microcontroller.

His system centers around an AVR microprocessor, the ATtiny2313. Some DIP switches are used to set the number of slides to be scanned, and the timing for synchronizing the projector and the camera. Using two relays, the cable release for the DSLR and the remote advance pins on the slide projector are connected to the AVR. [Brian] used a macro lens and sets the focus, exposure, and f-stop manual. Once everything looks good the touch of a button quickly steps through the entire carousel at about 1 slide per second. A small video of the process is embedded after the break and his writeup has some comparison photos between a slide scanner and this setup.

Continue reading “Slide Digitizer” →

CNC Hot Wire Cutter From Scanners

October 19, 2009 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

hot-wire-cutter-from-scanners

[Raul] built a CNC hot wire cutter that he uses for cutting shapes out of foam. His device uses two flat bed scanners to provide two planes of motion. One scanner arm has the foam mounted on it and provides the Y-axis movement. The other scanner has the hot wire mounted on it and provides the X-axis movement. The cutting wire is mounted on a flexed bow made from heavy gauge coat hanger wire.

He tapped into the logic board of one scanner to gain access to the motor movements. The other is connected through a couple of H-bridges. Both are controlled by an Atmel AVR ATmega128 which in turn takes its commands from a connection with a computer printer port. A python program uses vector graphic files in SVG format and traces the outline for cutting.

We’ve got a video of this in action after the break. At our request, [Raul] took some time to post a set of pictures and make comments on them. Thanks for the hard work and great job! Continue reading “CNC Hot Wire Cutter From Scanners” →

Barcode Scanner In Processing

September 22, 2009 by James Munns 3 Comments

barcode_sc

Reader [Nikolaus] decided that instead of using an existing image based bar code decoder, he would write his own. Using the Processing language he created a scanner that parsed the black and white pattern when a bar code was centered on the image. His code then parsed that data and compared it with the initializing character to provide a reference. Currently his scanner supports three character sets of the Code 128 encoding, and provided his complete code so that others could add as they see fit. He admits that the code is a bit messy due to the lengthy character tables, but very straight forward.

DIY 3D Gets A Nod At SIGGRAPH

August 27, 2009 by Phil Burgess 3 Comments

3dscan

Among the courses at this year’s SIGGRAPH (an annual technical conference and showcase of the latest in computer graphics research) was an introduction to 3D scanning that covers all the bases: mathematical foundations, two different build-your-own hardware approaches, and how to process and render the resulting datasets. The presenters have assembled all the course materials on a top-notch web site featuring slide shows, complete source code, and an extensive round-up with links to both commercial and homebrew 3D scanning gear. The simplest of these methods requires nothing more than a webcam, halogen light source, and a stick!

SIGGRAPH and 3D scanning have been highlighted many times on Hack a Day, but we’re swelling with pride now seeing an academic venue give a favorable nod to the DIY hacking community (on their links page). Okay, so Hack a Day isn’t called out by name, but just wait’ll next year!

[Thanks Fahrzin]

Scanner Sensor Multi Touch

July 27, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 28 Comments

[vimeo= http://vimeo.com/5765795]

[Kyle McDonald] had a Visioneer XP 100 portable scanner laying around, so he started trying to come up with alternative uses for it. In the video above, we can see a multitouch setup rigged together using Openframeworks in Ubuntu. As you can see in the video, there’s some considerable lag. That is due to the 250-500 ms of buffering built into the scanner. It does have nice resolution; 10k pixels wide at 60 fps, so it has to be useful for something (aside from scanning). Anyone got any ideas? He says if the field of view was wider, he’d use it on a river bed to watch fish.

130 Megapixel Scanner Camera

June 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 34 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9ZoaPIHQc]

Made from a 1200 dpi epson scanner and a manual focus canon lens, this camera captures 130 Megapixel images. With a resolution of 13,068 x 10,173, these pictures are very detialed. You can see some examples in his flickr set. It doesn’t look like they’re the full size originals though. If you want to build your own, here’s a good start. Keep in mind that it’s from 2004 though.