e-mail a hand-drawn sketch

Thanks, that's good news, I'll give Visioneer another chance.

Win:

I had a B/W scanner that was about the size of a large paper punch, interfaced on a parallel cable. It was fast. However, I have never seen such a scanner with a button for "scan to email." For that, I think the Canon scanners and other flatbeds do well.

I now have an HP psc (printer, scanner, copier) that doesn't take up much room.

I wish I could remember the name of my older scanner.

Flatbeds and psc types usually have profiles. If you can get one with a scan to email profile and set the settings for a pencil sketch, you'll be set up pretty well. Also, consder a fax, maybe?

Another wholly different way is a graphics tablet or pen-based computer. With the tablet, you can put a piece of paper over the sensitive area, and use a felt-tipped electronic pen. With pen based computers, you draw right on the screen. Mine has a feel much like pen and paper and has a pressure sensitive pen option. With a pen-based computer or pen-enabled monitor, when the email comes back, you don't have to print it, annotate it, and scan it again. Plus you never run out of paper. :)

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research Falls Church, VA 22044-2536

Win, You're too hypertensive. Sit back, relax, sip a glass of wine, watch the wildlife... calm down already ;-)

BTW, Was it you or the wife that is into fish tanks?

I'm presently starting up a 240 gallon reef tank. The live rock is finally stabilized, after three weeks, so I'm about ready to add snails and crabs.

...Jim Thompson

Odd that you picked USB. I find I can't take 12 mpbs.

For my interface, I brazed sewing needles into a right angle female DB9 shell and made the connection to my spinal cord through the formen.

I blink my right eye to send DTR....it wouldn't be polite to say what I need to do to send a carriage return. Not in a forum where children might read the post, in any case. Let's just say that before a Usenet session I eat a bowl of Campbell's Bean Soup. :)

Doug (who is writing this at 110 bps, an appropriate rate for text...)

My hp3970 has that also, but I never use the buttons, I do everything from the keyboard ;-)

...Jim Thompson

My wife, fresh water only. 15 years of research, plus two home tanks.

Totaling about 30 seconds for the whole email thing, right?

Did you do the actual portal-to-portal timing test yet?

I'm not stressed enough yet to worry about it ;-)

(Exactly what would you like me to time? It's certainly going to depend on the drawing complexity.)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

Actually, the Canon has an e-mail button too, I just never bothered to set it up for my desired settings-- the CanoScan software picks a file name for you and opens an explorer window so you can double click and check it out (and crop/edit it if required and if you have full Acrobat, of course). It can also be set up to default to jpg if you like (not gif, unfortunately). It also opens your desired e-mail program (if it's not open already) with blank to/subject lines and the pdf file attached. It doesn't open Acrobat, that would be nice, but that's only one double click away. One button press and a double click- pretty slick.

I like to use b&w (not grayscale) like a fax machine, but 400dpi (double high-res fax).

Takes about 20 seconds from button push to having the file sitting there. It gives them default file names like Mail0002.PDF. A simple test drawing on quadrille paper was only 24k. I really like this software-- it used to be a nightmare. I'll put the test scan up in the schematics ng.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Winfield Hill wrote (in ) about 'e-mail a hand-drawn sketch', on Sat, 27 Aug 2005:

No, you have to marry them.

Yes, depending on how fast you can type the recipient and subject lines, and how quickly you can verify that the pdf is okay. I probably wouldn't bother looking at it I did it more often- it doesn't happen with a fax and nobody gets their knickers in a twist, they just re-send it if it doesn't come out well. And at 400dpi b&w, it always seems to come out fine (pen or pencil). Scanning to a jpg is much slower, both because of the high-res color default settings I've got and because Photoshop is a bit of a pig and takes 15 or 20 seconds by itself just to open.

In scan->pdf it's more than fast enough for the few times I use it. Thanks for raising the question-- otherwise I'd probably never have set up the e-mail function properly.

BTW, this is a USB2.0 scanner.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote in news:1125151995.351339.41970 @g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

My HP Scanjet 5370C has an email button right on the front.

SNIP

A simple page. My scanner insists on taking the whole page, some others do two passes, one to evaluate the size, plus a second real scan. I don't think that actually saves any time. So do whatever is fastest, but do include the email insertion time. It's a simple experiment, useful to see how bad (or how good) things really are.

Which Logitech model?

Scanner, hp3970 flatbed; E-mail, venerable Eudora Pro v3.0.5 ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I use a cheap 640 x 480 capable USB webcam with an "expose" button on the top (some Logitech model).

Makes an instant photograph of your sketch. Done.

Incidentally, the webcam has amazing macro capabilities (manually screwing the lens to close-focus) - great to photograph SMT-sized issues like poor soldering etc. Great to show the production line to step up QC :-)

And if I really want to scare somebody, I can also show my face in a VC contact. Works quite well these days.

I got one at a garage sale back in May for a dollar, and was surprised when I plugged it in that it worked with my Linux distribution right away.

You're right, they are pretty good for closeups. I spent some time fiddling with it. Mount it above a flat surface, and it's probably fine for this.

And unlike the scanner, it shows results almost immediately. So if you've got it wrong, it can be fixed immediately.

Michael

OK, thanks Jim. I'm done grousing now, but I'll be looking out for faster setups. I'm going to try adjusting my Canon LiDE USB scanner settings and software, and I'll try the Visioneer soon.

One would think that 15 to 20 seconds should be possible. That means the scan should be no more than 10 seconds, and the rest of the actions should be quasi-automated.