Portable Scanner

[Giskard1708]

Just sent in the money order for my pandora, and picked one up for my girlfriend as well! Yay me!

Anyway, I am looking to pick up a cheap, portable, sheetfed usb scanner so that I can scan documents into my Pandora right when I recieve them.

For example I am looking at an Ambir Travelscan 464.

My question is, can such a thing be made to run under our flavor and dialect of Linux? I am not currently a Linux user so I don't know anything about drivers. It's usb, so I would think it would just work provided it gets enough power from the USB port, but... maybe I'm wrong?

Maybe someone could enlighten me.

Thanks

 

[Chip]

It seems that scanner is also sold under the Visigo and Syscan brands (possibly more).

According to the Portuguese Ubuntu wiki, it is recognized by Linux. According to this thread, that doesn't mean it works well.

That SANE thread would seem to indicate that the driver used is closed source, sou you wouldn't be able to recompile it for the Pandora.

Sorry, but it looks like the best I can tell you is "probably not".



And for the record, I found all of this out by typing "ambir travelscan 464 linux" into a google search box.

 

[Kyo]

Linux is horrible with scanners. ARM Linux is even more horrible with scanners, as the closed source drivers are not available (as chip mentioned) - so yeah, chances are it won't work.

 

[joseluisjazz]

I've found this list of linux drivers for handheld scanners, that might be of help for you. Maybe there are any of them open-source or do provide arm binaries (I doubt that last one though)

 

[Giskard1708]

Did some more poking around and found out that the TravelScan 464's are Completely supported by SANE.

I guess the problem is that I don't entirely know what that means for the pandora.

Apparently I will need a frontend, or application to actually do the scanning, and since its unlikely that any of these have been ported to ARM...

BUT I did find this one web-based frontend for SANE called phpSANE:
Here --> and then the sourceforge project page here.

Correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't I just use this in firefox to scan documents using the TravelScan? Or would it still have to be recompiled for ARM?

How much work would it take to recompile say, the scanimage command line frontend for ARM?

Forgive me, I thought I knew a lot about programming, then I met Linux Geeks.

 

[joseluisjazz]

Sane is already present in the Angstrom repositories.

Also I present you the XSane project, which doesn't seem to be compiled in Angstrom, but it's in debian armel repositories, so it's fine.

 

[Svartalf]

Linux is horrible with scanners. ARM Linux is even more horrible with scanners, as the closed source drivers are not available (as chip mentioned) - so yeah, chances are it won't work.

Depends on which scanners you're talking about there, Kyosys. Lots of scanners are actually supported in Sane these days, apparently even the one in question- though, I know that the bulk of the HP scanners and many of the Cannon ones work VERY well.

Not to mention that those "portable" scanners for "laptop" use are rather limited in thier usefulness to mostly letter sized sheets of paper... Give me an LIDE 25 any day for that task. Yes, it's "bulkier", but it's just as self powered as the other device, is durable and lightweight, can scan damned near anything that'll fit on the document glass- and works wherever there's XSane...