digital camera control

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.

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

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

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.

I wasn't sure if I wanted the camera controlled by software or by the microcontroller. The entire page turning mechanism would be controlled by a microcontroller, and was thinking that the microcontroller should also control the camera. After entire book has been imaged I would like the camera to automatically download the images to the computer. After speaking to some camera experts, I learned that most high end cameras have an electronic shutter release connected to a switch, and that if I rewired it and connected a relay or an electronic switch than it could be automatically controlled. If this could be controlled by an electronic switch, how could I connect it to my microcontroller?

You need what could be a program controlled I/O line, sometimes called a strobe line. These are readily available in industrial control systems, and your micro probably has some spare 5 V user programmed I/O lines. Then you need an input on your camera system that accepts 5V level signals, whatever it is it has to match. You might also use an open collector or opto isolated interface not that you need the isolation but some boards just already have them. No way to tell you if you don't give specifics. You need to read up on this, in a microcontroller manual or system integration manual. I suggest you try Google.