digital camera control

Posted by on July 8, 2007, 5:46 pm

I am trying to design a robotic page turning machine and I would like
the ability to take pictures of every page that is turned with a
digital camera. Is there any way to have either a microcontroller or
a software program to automatically have the camera take a picture
every five or 10 seconds? I know there are software programs where
you can remotely trigger the camera to take a picture, but it requires
the input of the user. I know there must be a way, because there are
automatic book scanners that do that kind of thing.

Posted by John Nagle on July 8, 2007, 8:29 pm

dmehling@keenebroadband.com wrote:

> I am trying to design a robotic page turning machine and I would like
> the ability to take pictures of every page that is turned with a
> digital camera. Is there any way to have either a microcontroller or
> a software program to automatically have the camera take a picture
> every five or 10 seconds? I know there are software programs where
> you can remotely trigger the camera to take a picture, but it requires
> the input of the user. I know there must be a way, because there are
> automatic book scanners that do that kind of thing.

The camera part is easy. The page turning part is hard.
I have friends at the Internet Archive who struggle with this
problem, and it's taken years to get working book scanners.

John Nagle

Posted by on July 8, 2007, 8:26 pm

> dmehl...@keenebroadband.com wrote:

> > I am trying to design a robotic page turning machine and I would like
> > the ability to take pictures of every page that is turned with a
> > digital camera. Is there any way to have either a microcontroller or
> > a software program to automatically have the camera take a picture
> > every five or 10 seconds? I know there are software programs where
> > you can remotely trigger the camera to take a picture, but it requires
> > the input of the user. I know there must be a way, because there are
> > automatic book scanners that do that kind of thing.

> The camera part is easy. The page turning part is hard.
> I have friends at the Internet Archive who struggle with this
> problem, and it's taken years to get working book scanners.
> John Nagle

I'm not worried about the page turning part; I have that figured out.
Just tell me how to get the camera part to work.

Posted by Gordon McComb on July 8, 2007, 10:04 pm

John Nagle wrote:

> The camera part is easy. The page turning part is hard.
> I have friends at the Internet Archive who struggle with this
> problem, and it's taken years to get working book scanners.

Kirtas has sold a commercial model for about 3-4 years. Co-developed
with Xerox in the late 1990s, until they dropped the project. Most of
the whole-book digitization projects these days use a Kirtas scanner or
one type or another.

-- Gordon

Posted by PeteB on July 9, 2007, 11:18 am

On Jul 8, 5:46 pm, dmehl...@keenebroadband.com wrote:

What sort of computer are you using to control the page turning
hardware?

A decent quality industrial camera interfaced to a PC capture system,
with a decent lens should do it. Then use a trigger from the page
turning hardware to signal the PC to store the image, after it has
turned
to a new page.
Are the images monochrome or do you need a color system?

Pete B.

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