Yet another 0.9.10 build log

[og200]

I got my kit from Rob earlier this week and it all came together very smoothly. The parts are beautifully cut and the fit is pretty much perfect. For us European types there's some fiddling to allow for metric hardware, but it's minimal. I had to drill out the holes to accept M8 bolts and I used 10 bolts that were rather shorter than the Imperial equivalents (40mm) to make things neat, but otherwise everything worked.

Rob sent along the L-brackets, which was great because there was no way I could have got these here!

When painting I masked out the bearings; Rob says it doesn't hurt to go ahead and spray them but I was feeling cautious.

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It took me most of a day to paint and put together but here it is.

The only things that might be of interest to others with this build is my jury-rigged electronic setup.

I was going to be triggering this electronically and running both cameras tethered and with mains power. With my one-camera setup I've been using one of these USB foot switches to trigger the shots (called HID switches because they use USB Human Interface Device protocols).

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I wanted a trigger switch on the handle rather than a footswitch so I considered ripping out the electronics and wiring them in but they were 'encapsulated' in hot glue. Nasty.

Instead I've ended up taking the innards out of a PSU, USB hub, and USB gamepad and splicing them into a hacky electronics box for the scanner. I also wired the lights in so they can run off the same switch.

Here's the hardware

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Ripped up...

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And put back together (sort of).

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For now I'm using JoyToKey to translate the gamepad button into a hotkey. One of these days I'll build joystick/gamepad support into ScanManager.

Joy2Key

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I ended up using a microswitch; it's not pretty but it's the only thing I could find at Maplin that has decent force and travel and a nice positive response.

The switch

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I'll try to post a video of it working with ScanManager soon.

[spomwii]

Nice work!

What kind of camera are you using?

[og200]

I'm using a pair of Canon A640s. It's early days but they seem to do the job for the kinds of book I'm interested in.

[og200]

They also support USB tethering with viewfinder and remote capture support, which I use, so they seemed like a good bet.

[rob]

Nice job! I'm glad the parts arrived ok!