[sane-devel] Webcam-like book scanners

Low Salt Popcorn thelowsaltpopcorn at hotmail.com
Tue Dec 24 04:59:20 GMT 2024


These "scanners" basically look like a webcam mounted on an arm atop an 
upside-down letter "L" (or Greek capital letter gamma).

They look like the best option for scanning old books that don't require 
laser-printer quality resolution.

One such scanner is reviewed by CNX software:

https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/07/23/czur-et24-pro-book-scanner-review-with-ubuntu-22-04-linux/

The author notes that the scanner practically identifies itself as a 
webcam ("UVC"). So in theory it should "work" on any GNu/Linux computer, 
with only the Windows/Mac user software as the major difference.

I've also seen in various online platforms (e.g. AliExpress) similar, 
but much cheaper no-brand models. So my question is, does anybody here 
have such a device? Is it reasonable to assume that all scanners of this 
type are UVC-compatible devices?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_video_device_class

If these devices are indeed all UVC, my idea is to have ffmpeg take JPEG 
or PNG snapshots of the material I'm scanning. Or otherwise simply take 
one continuous video and later simply pause and screenshot individual 
frames.

Note: I've searched the sane backends page:

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-backends.html#VIDEO

I can't find any reference to UVC-device support



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