[sane-devel] searching for business card scanner compatible with sane

[Jelle de Jong]

m. allan noah wrote, on 28-12-09 22:24:
>> I have the feeling the driver is doing it's job, but the scanner needs
>> an complete additional layer to become productive usable.
>>
>> This layer should still be optional invisible for the end user. The
>> few experiences I gathered the last days testing the scanner gives me
>> the impression the following features should be added as some sort of
>> filter that can be enable and lies between the driver and the scanadf
>> (sane) output image.
>>
>> By default the scanner scans in duplex mode and scans all input
>> available (no -x, -y or --page-width and --page-height) this should
>> ensures no source data is missed. (this is currently not the case)
>>
>> This data is send to the filter and does the following:
>>
>> 1) recognizes document size
>> 2) removes blank pages (backsides of input with nothing on it)
>> 3) auto rotation and autodeskew
>>
>> extra "like to have" possibilities:
>> 4) auto color detection
>> 5) auto resolution selection depending on input sizes
>>
>> After this there will be a simple but good usable image that can be
>> used for all other stuff. This output is what I expected when using
>> scanadf without any options on an simple A4 of A8 or C5 input sized
>> source.
> 
> Yes- it would be nice to have a seamless 'middleware' layer which
> could clean the output of any sane driver. It need not be completely
> separate from the actual scanner driver, as they could all use a
> common external library to provide these features. That might simplify
> the user interface. Another option is to write a sane 'middle-end',
> but I'm not sure what form that code (and particularly its interface)
> might take.

If there is anything I can do in the forms like sponsoring or
spreading awareness please tell me. I would very much like to see
these middle ware layer to become stable and available for all
distributions?

Is there a SANE developer doing some nice things at FOSDEM 2010 this year?

I also would like to add colour balancing as one of the features
making background really white, the ScanSnap seems to make backgrounds
a bit blueish when doing colour scans.

>> Would it be possible to share the technical datasheet of the chipsets and it's options/registers used to develop the device driver? I am interested in how primitive these chipets are because I for something that can do so little, the price is very high for a mass produced consumer product.
> 
> The fujitsu chipsets are some of the most advanced available. They
> have jpeg output, full-speed duplex, USB&SCSI, self-calibration,
> dynamic thresholding, noise removal, intermediate resolution
> interpolation, etc, etc. If you think this machine is bad, you should
> try to write a driver for a low-level chipset sometime. One that makes
> you calculate the motor slope tables and maintain all the per-cell
> shading info in an external file. That will teach you the true meaning
> of the word dumb.

I am utterly grateful for the current fujitsu driver. I do have some
experience with low-level chipset programming and it will indeed get
you more humble.

> There are no publicly available docs for the S1500. It's protocol is
> very similar to that of old SCSI fujitsu machines, just wrapped in a
> USB packet, and some additional capabilities added. You can see the
> M3093 OEM Manual here:
> 
> http://193.128.183.41/HOME/v3__product.asp?pid=51&inf=doc&wg=0

Thanks, this OEM manual shows a lot of nice information to bad it is
not public available for the S1500. There is especially a lot of nice
information over what the ADF can handle. It does say it can do
automatic page size detection.

I still have to be honest that my 130 Euro HP scanner has a more
stable ADF input feeder, causing more paper to go in and go out
straighter. It is by far not as fast, and had no duplex, but the
output quality is the same or even better because of better colour
balancing. It can also not scan A8 buy the S1500 also need a lot of
manual tweaking to scan different pager sizes without black banners.

I added support for the S1500 to my scanadf post-processing systems
and fixed some issues that came up when having a fast duplex scanner
outputting multiple images at the same time :D

http://www.powercraft.nl/pipermail/packages-commit/2009-December/000221.html
https://secure.powercraft.nl/svn/packages/trunk/source/pct-scanner-scripts/pct-scanner-scripts-devel/

There will be a new Debian package in a few months after testing the
current code for a while. It will eventually be available to all
Debian based distributions. There is no OCR output yet because
tesseract is not create enough quality yet.

Thanks in advance,

Kind regards,

Jelle