Diligent designer Benjamin Bezine has created a Raspberry Pi-powered film scanner that is combined with a film developer made from Lego and a mirrorless camera that, along with machine learning, automatically scans entire rolls of film.
Bezine writes that this is his fourth iteration of the Roboscan device, with the latest model made more efficient thanks to the Raspberry Pi. It uses machine learning to detect when a photo has been correctly framed before the camera is triggered.
“The first draft was a simple proof of concept, but was too sensitive to variations in the film, such as stiffness of the film, inaccuracies in the spacing of photos,” Bezine writes on Reddit. “There were also many manual actions, such as camera settings that you always forget to change. So I created a new, more robust version that tries to make this faster and foolproof. “
He says he has built a web interface for controlling the scanning process and has full control over camera settings through that web interface which are saved and restored at the end of each session.
Bezine says this device can scan a 36-frame roll of film in about six minutes, including transferring the images to a PC.
To help those who want to try making this device at home, Bezine has published the Lego brick structure designs here.
You will also need a digital camera with a macro lens compatible with libgphoto2 with support for image capture and viewing, a Raspberry Pi, a stepper motor with driver, a 3D printed adapter to integrate the motor into the Legos, a white LED backlight module, an LED driver, a high-power LED and the aforementioned Lego frame.
Bezine has published full instructions on how to assemble the device on Github, as well as the open-source software.
(via Hackaday)