A book scanner called M1000 came a few days ago. It is estimated that it is the largest evaluation equipment in the history of computer evaluation room, except TV. The three-dimensional dimension of the machine exceeds the conventional floor tile (56 * 58.5 * 57.5 cm), and its weight is similar to that of barreled water (19 kg).
The target customers of the machine are small companies, printing rooms, libraries and other organizations with limited budget and manpower, so as to occupy the gap between high-speed and low-speed scanners (the latter is cheap but time-consuming, while the former is worry free but expensive...).
The physical parameters of "violence" are designed to improve the scanning speed of the machine. The officially claimed scanning speed can reach 60-80 pages/minute, but what is its actual performance? Now let's have a look.
principle
M1000 is for bound paper materials, such as enterprise financial bills, archives, ancient books and classics. The machine adopts the method of camera imaging+software processing, which saves the process of data flipping and assembly/disassembly, and will have more advantages in cost and speed.
M1000 is actually composed of camera+fill light+book shelf. The hardware threshold is not high, and its technical threshold is almost at the software end. The machine needs to be used with the PC client, whose hardware is responsible for taking photos, and the PC client is responsible for processing the pictures into electronic documents.
Its scanning principle is similar to that of apps such as omniscan king on mobile phones. After image acquisition, after page bending and restoration, finger and sundries removal, background purification, trimming and other software processing, the electronic version of scanned documents can be obtained.
Parameters and appearance
The machine consists of two 5 megapixel cameras, fill light, adjustable base and bracket. The CMOS area of both cameras is 1/2.5 inch, the resolution is 2595 * 1944, and auto focus is supported.
The PC client output format is jpg PDF、tiff， The scanning speed is 0.3 seconds/two pages (0.15 seconds per page).
The "long neck" bracket of the machine can be removed during transportation, and this shape is formed after assembly.
The bracket can be raised under working condition.
The support is rough, and the side is the fixing hole of the expansion support.
On the right side of the support is a telescopic fixed button, which can be retracted after being pressed, and locked after being released. The silver part on the front is engraved with A4/B5 paper number marks. When scanning paper materials, adjust the height of the support according to the size of the materials.
The top of the bracket is the camera module, and the top is the parameter nameplate.
The camera module can rotate up and down within a certain range.
The camera is placed at an angle on both sides of the module.
In the middle is a fill light composed of 6 LEDs, with two levels of brightness adjustment.
The huge red circle on the camera is a manual tuning ring.
The size of the bracket is 56 * 58.5cm, which is huge and can allow the A3 paper to unfold stably.
The bracket is covered with a thick cushion.
The normal B5 size book is still a circle smaller.
The bracket is composed of two supporting plates that can move left and right. When the supporting plate moves, it will have a "click click" clamping body.
The lower left corner of the pallet underframe is the product name in red font.
This evaluation is the PRO version, which has a high power grid metal sticker.
There is a red indicator light in the middle of the front end and the upper right corner of the carrier chassis. The former is a photo indicator light, and the latter is a power indicator light.
The bottom frame of the support plate is a metal nameplate with product slogan and manufacturer name on it.
The secret of 19kg weight mainly comes from the exaggerated metal material.
The tray can be turned up.
The lower part of the tray is the groove for clamping.
Provide 5-stage position adjustment.
All interfaces and switches are centralized on the back of the machine.
The left side is the power switch, and the right side is the two-level brightness fill light switch.
From left to right are power supply, data cable and shutter key interfaces.
The shutter button of the machine is made into an independent shutter plate, on which are two shutter keys with the same function. When pressed, the two cameras will take photos at the same time, and it is temporarily impossible to control a camera independently.
The back of the shutter is a soft plastic pad for anti slip.
The shutter plate is magnetic and can be attached to the machine tray in various positions.
The 4-pin interface of the shutter is rare.
The data line interface is the same ladder interface as the printer.
The 9V/2A power supply is small in size, and the ultimate power consumption is 18W.
After wiring, it can work.
Software use
The machine needs to be connected to the computer for use, and the official provides a software CD, which contains a driver and a client named BookChanger. In addition to software and drivers, the official also provided super detailed guidance videos and flash.
The installation process is basically the next step.
The only special thing is that the client needs to input the random serial number.
The software interface is similar to the image processing software. On the left is the photos taken, in the middle is the effect preview, and on the top and right are tools for manually processing scanned files.
When scanning, switch to the video preview mode, where you can see the real-time video of the camera. However, the default frame rate of the software is only 20 frames (to reduce the processing pressure on low performance computers?), so the picture will look like "frame skipping".
The top of the right column can display real-time definition and image processing progress. The machine supports auto focusing, but the focusing speed is slow (about 20-30 seconds). Below the right column are the image storage locations, switches for functions such as "finger removal, exhibit operation, tilt correction", and switch between black and white and color scanning.
What you need to do next is: press shutter - page turning - shutter - page turning... After scanning the file to be scanned, you will enter the processing interface.
The batch preview window in the left column can be switched to the original drawing and processing mode. The software provides shortcut keys such as multiple selection, insertion, and deletion, which can quickly process scanned files or make up shots. It is easy to use.
The top bar of the entire interface is a manual processing toolbar, and the left side is a curve control option. You can manually add measurement items and identification lines to modify the processing effect.
On the right side of the top bar are processing tools such as tilting, trimming and flipping.
The preset automatic processing of the software can already process most color and black and white scanning objects, so the use rate of manual tools is not high. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the software does not have a reset button for the time being, and after adjusting the wrong manual parameters, you may not know how to adjust them back
Effect test
The preset definition of the machine is 150 DPI, and 30% compression is performed. If higher accuracy is required, the parameters can be adjusted manually. However, the size of the final original image will hover around 160-300kb depending on the complexity of the scanning content. The processed color images and black and white images will also hover around 400k-1.5m depending on the content complexity.
The original image of each scanned image will be automatically retained. The above is the image output by the camera. Because the site lighting environment is poor, the fill light is turned on. The scanning object is B5 sized Biography of Ren Zhengfei.
After the original image is magnified to 100%, the screenshot is as shown above. It can be seen that the 5 megapixel camera still has a lot of pixel margin for B5 page scanning.
After the software automatically processes the output file, it becomes the picture above, and the border and fingers are removed.
100% screenshots of similar positions. The text edge has been sharpened and the effect is sharp.
Note the upper right corner of the left figure, which is the bending position in the middle after the book is opened; On the right is the text processed by the algorithm, and the bending part has been corrected. Of course, if you want to ensure the effect, you'd better choose a good opening angle of the book to avoid some words being blocked (especially for dictionary or account book and other super thick materials, their words are more likely to be blocked).
The color scanning uses an A4 size real estate magazine, which just uses the limit height of the bracket.
When viewed at 100%, it may be due to insufficient lighting on site, and the ISO of the camera is on the high side, but the details are OK. After all, this is the limit scanning size.
When the fill light is turned on, the image definition is immediately improved to a higher level, and you can even see the paper details reflected by the halo clearly. But because the angle is not adjusted properly, it reflects light
In actual use, the reflection of the fill light can be avoided by changing the bracket angle. However, the most convenient way to measure is to turn on the lights in the office. The light will be more uniform and soft.
Kill in a devious way
In order to carry forward the fine tradition of killing with tricks, we purposely used the wrong method and found some data that cannot be processed by scanners
Scan the video manuscript (A4 paper) that is intentionally placed horizontally and askew. The trimming function can still work normally, but the tilt correction seems unable to work.
Scan the screen of electronic products. Because the fill light led to the deviation of the camera to the metering on both sides of the iPad, the left side exposure was normal, and the right side had obvious overexposure. However, the details are good, and the scratches on the screen can be seen clearly in the reflective area.
The details of SF express bags are excellent, but there are obvious image processing traces on the image edges, which may be caused by algorithm processing.
If the scanning data is not reflective material, even if the angle is not adjusted, it can have a good scanning effect.
With one hand, the effect is a bit like a traditional dismountable scanner.
Stamp the magnifying glass at the upper right corner of the image to view the gif dynamic image
Finally, I tried to scan the Biography of Ren Zhengfei in the size of B5 at the fastest speed for three times. In one minute, 56, 54 and 58 pages were scanned respectively, which is close to the official 60-80 pages/minute.
Scanning process of traditional scanner (the magnifier at the upper right corner of the stamp image can view the gif moving image)
The shutter was pressed 27, 26 and 29 times in one minute (two pages were scanned at a time). Obviously, the speed bottleneck is not the machine, but the speed of manual page turning. But even this is much better than traditional scanning.
However, this also makes us look forward to the early birth of the automatic page turning function. In addition, it is said that the official plans to launch wifi transmission and OCR (character recognition) functions, as well as mobile phone clients. Then you can leave the data cable and leave the computer.
summary
The biggest advantage of the M1000 is, of course, free disassembly and scanning speed. However, because there is no cover plate, the effect of color scanning will be affected by ambient light and fill light.
As for the price, this has always been the biggest bottleneck of office equipment personalization. The price of M1000 is also high, 4880 for the ordinary version, and 12800 for the PRO version in the evaluation (the main difference is in the number of software side functions).
This price is naturally unacceptable to individual users, but M1000's competitors are the following price monsters with "huge profits and low sales"
The biggest personal feeling after the evaluation is that M1000 actually buys algorithms, and the hardware is more like a foil. If it is made into a mobile app, individual users can save money on hardware. But considering that Chinese people do not seem to have the habit of buying paid apps, will manufacturers really make apps, and what will the price of apps be after they do it
