In Which I Make a DIY Book Scanner

$500 diy book scanner kit

After I heard that there were attempts to commercialize a book scanner that consisted of two glasses, lights and cameras, I figured that somebody on the interwebs might have had some prototype that they would like to get rid of. What I found instead was a whole bunch of DIY book scanners, some as crappy as a piece of cardboard and a glass (like this one), some a little more complex, and some just crazy awesome (this beauty is a project from a non-profit. At $500, I can just imagine what they would have to sell it if they actually wanted to make money out of it. Anyway, it might just be the perfect graduation present *wink*).

Mine's not that great, but it does the job. It's pretty slow, but mostly because I don't have the awesome cameras that these guys have. I had to take the pictures with my cellphone, and for better quality I took them with a little app called TiniScan, which converts the picture into high contrast black and white images. That, of course, is awesome, but it does it as you're saving the picture, so it takes like 30 seconds to convert and save each image. The nice thing is that there isn't much post-editing.

In one of the scanners I saw online (and that now I can't find for the life of me), the glass thingy that flattens the book pages for better photographing were connected to a pole with rollers that went up and down, but I thought that was too complicated for me to do—I don't have the tools nor the skill required—, which is a bummer, because I really liked the idea. But as I was working on my computer at work I realized that the monitor stand did just that: go up and down at a distance of about 10 inches on a straight roller. I then went to the thrift store in my way home and found a monitor with a stand that didn't do exactly what the one at work did, but it did something similar, and it was good enough (it kind of bends down instead. See video below). I then built the glass box: I screwed two acrylic plates into two triangular pieces of wood (1/2 inch thick), then screwed one of the wood triangles to the monitor stand, and voila. I also made a base where to rest the book. That is still made of cardboard, but the wooden version is coming.

Since I don't have some fancy cameras to use, I built a rest/craddle for my cellphone on a piece of wood resting inside the glass box. I tried a tripod, but even when I shorten the legs all the way, they're still too far from the book, which messes up the image quality.

Lighting of course is very important, so I got a lamp with a halogen bulb and hung it from the ceiling above the scanner.

This is the final result:

The glass box with the cellphone rest

Glass box connected to monitor stand. The cardboard base is underneath it

Bottom view of glass box. The black sheet on the opposite
side of the page being photographed makes it easier to edit the images

The book on the cardboard base. The glass lowers into the book, flattening
the pages

The lowered glass flattening the book page

Cellphone on the rest/craddle

Halogen light on $3.00 lamp from Savers

The scanner in action. Sorry it's sideways. My iPad's tripod adapter is landscape, and Vine doesn't like that.

Here's my second book scanned. It's more like a pamphlet, so it's a short one. I OCR'd it, so it's text searchable.