[sane-devel] How i can use 2 or more scanners at the same time??

m. allan noah kitno455 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 21 00:59:53 UTC 2008


On 7/20/08, kid2k4 at email.it <kid2k4 at email.it> wrote:
> Hi to all (sorry for my english)
>  I write from Italy, with other young artist are working on a machine
>  that requires a man-size scanner. An A1 or A0 scanner it's very
>  exspensive for us, ahah.
>  I use Gnu/linux (Debian-like distro) but i'm not i geek, :-( However i
>  know the potential of open source software. I thought immediately to a
>  solution ad-hoc but i don't know if it's possible. The idea is about a
>  big scanner builded with more (6/8). We thought to disassemble scanners
>  and take only the parts needed to scan.
>  I make us some questions.
>
>  - It's possible to control more that one scanner with a tool like SANE?
>  - If yes, it's possible to build a single scanned image from the scanned
>  images of each machine,  in real time :-)
>  - If we try to make the scanner on lan an then take each scanned image
>  and build one big images? We need one pc for each scanner?
>  - More and more.... :-)
>
>  I am asking a bit around and seemed a good idea to also ask the
>  community of SANE.
>  I hope the this idea can make some step to our goals.
>  Bye bye.

1. the optical package of each scanner cannot be placed end-to-end and
get a complete scan, because there is some dead space for packaging or
mechanism on the ends. so now you have to stagger them, and then have
a staggered calibration strip. correcting skew and adjusting height
will be excercises in very precise machining.

2. you will have to have much larger and very rigid guides and carriage.

3. you will have to have a much larger motor, or convince the series
of motors to move at EXACTLY the same rate, or some of them will be
dead weight (very difficult to do if they have independent
controllers)

4. you will have to multiplex all those streams of data, probably
causing dataloss or motor stoppage/backtracking when the pc cannot
keep up.

as you can see, software is the least of your problems :)

i suggest that you change directions. build a very square and sturdy
moving platform, and scan with one scanner, using multiple passes,
shifting the work one width left each time. you would have to stitch
the pieces together afterwards, but that will be easy.

allan
-- 
"The truth is an offense, but not a sin"



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