hobby electronics

Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA we have a Maker Faire every August (Saturday, August 24, this year).

I have been going regularly, in fact I have shown my stuff (how to digitize a print book) for several years. They have a lot of interesting stuff, but not the sort of thing this thread has been talking about. Lots of foods, drones, and other stuff, such as costumes. But not much in the way of stuff built from electronic components, unless you count the small computers used to controls the working systems.

I think somebody has said that by using the various small computers you can do a lot more complex things than you can with individual components. That is why you don't see many things that use individual components.

Bill

Yikes, blast from the past.

The amp was named for Frank Ryder, mostly because someone liked the name.

Sorry about that last post. I have been having trouble with my email and everything has been messed up.

Have you found

Bill

It is not blocked in the US. If you use a VPN to tunnel into the US, you will be able to get it over the internet.

Wonder why the EU thinks that blocking such as RT will have much effect.

Joe Gwinn

I used to solder/build up valve amplifiers that went into record players back in the 60's as a school kid...300V bites :)

I have a large paper library. I am also getting old. I may have to go into some sort of assisted living when I can't go on living by myself. When I do I will not be able to take my library with me. So I have been building a digital library. Most books that I have are available in digital format. But I realized that many of the older books are not available. They are mainly fiction, mysteries, SF, even a few romances. And mostly from the time when books were mostly a one time event. A few old time authors, such as Agatha Christie, are still in print and available as print or digital, but many are not. So I decided to digitize those books for myself. While most of them are in copyright, I have no idea how to get permission. I suspect that is why many of them are not in digital format. So I have been digitizing them for my own use. I will not distribute them in any way. They are strictly for my own use. If any of them show up in digital format I will buy that edition.

So I have been doing non-destructive scanning. This is a rather long process, since I am creating epub formatted books epub is a format based on HTML so that it can be automatically reformatted to fit on any screen. But that means extra work. It takes anyplace for 3 days to a week, depending on the size and quality of the book. First I scan it using my DIY scanner. This involves taking a photo of each page, then converting the photos to text, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. After that is the slow part. I insert the text into a word processor and proof it to correct all the many errors the OCR makes in the process. How many errors depends partly on the quality of the source. Then it is fairly simple to convert it to the epub format, or into the AZW3 format that can be read by kindle.

Bill

Generally photographing the pages takes me 30 minutes to an hour. I mostly scanned books of 250 to 300 pages. And most of the books, being older, were somewhat smaller. There weren't a whole lot of 1000 page fiction works in the 'good old days'.

I think that the increase in the size of books can probably be blamed on word processors. With a word processor you can revise, insert and delete text a lot more easily than with a typewriter.

Bill

I often hire kids from local high schools that are in the robotics programs. This usually works out well for both of us...

John :-#)#

Anyone remember SN76013N/023N. Horrible things, particularly when it must be your fault that the replacements (two for stereo) blew up again a few days after repair.

I am using my own KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) scanner, which I designed myself. I originally called it a Tower Scanner, but changed the name when I realized that I had made it as simple as possible.

I posted a description of it on DIY Book Scanner, at:

I don't do much manipulation of the images before I OCR them. I use Abby Finereader 14 which does a pretty good job of picking out the text. I stick with 14 because it works good and newer versions are only available as subscriptions.

Understand that I am making ebooks that I can carry around on different devises, not PDFs that can also be viewed on different devices, but don't necessarily have all the text correct.

And I don't digitize technical books. They are a whole different proposition, with lots of finicky illustrations. Not something that I would like to try to digitize.

Also I don't want to destroy my paper books. I like reading books on paper. After all that is how I grew up.

Bill

ISTR a remarkable number of 741s or 709s inside them and the odd SE540 in the better ones. 2955/3055 output pairs - before power FETs took over.

STK devices were fairly common too.

When I worked as a designer I came across fake parts a few times. One reel if devices was SO8 and the devices were marked with the correct number but the manufacturer didn't make that part in SO8. So it wasn't hard to spot the fake. Another reel of devices did have the correct part number on the correct package but it was anybody's guess what chip was actually in the package.

We once had a flashover event with a very expensive prototype 22bit ADC back in the late 80's where it vapourised the bond out leads. The chip was working really well right up to that point and we had a 6 sig fig linear ADC (intention was to replace bulk buy Solartron 7060s).

We decided honesty was the best course of action and the chip makers liasson guy admitted that if *they* hadn't tested it themselves before shipping it to us they could have believed that they forgot that step!

They gave us another chip and the things went into full production not long after they were able to produce them in bulk. Solartron were a bit surprised when one their best customers vanished completely.

There is some software that works with some cameras that will send the images directly to the computer. When I was KISSing the scanner I went with the simplest approach. This way it will work with any camera, you just have to build it so that the camera is at the correct distance from the platen.

Well, I see that the way the book is set on the scanner is similar, but of course my scanner takes the whole page at once. The goal is, of course, different. The reading machine is turning the printed text into sound, which is a whole different thing from turning it into text.

Since I have the original scans in the computer, rather than running them straight through the OCR and losing the originals that is not a problem. And of course I still have the original books so that I can proof the text with confidence.

Does the PDF reflow the text so that the text size is the same size on all devices, including a phone? The EPUB format does that. It also resizes any illustrations so that they will fit.

Illustrations of course have to be handled seperately. I run any page with illustrations through a graphics programs, such as GIMP to do any cleanup, such as cropping the image to provide only the illustration. Then I reinsert the illustration into the text file at the appropriate location.

As I say, I prefer real books, and have the space to keep them. When I do have to dispose of them I will sell them to a used books store, or donate them to Goodwill, which, here in Tulsa, has a pretty good used book store in the back corner

Bill

Some software may work that way. What I used was set it uSome software may work that way. What I used was set it up and then take the pictures pretty much blind.

That was one of the reasons for my design of the KISS scanner.

One advantage of the EPUB format is that it can be read on any size device, including a phone, although I for one can not imagine trying to read on a phone.

I am only scanning in my collection of fiction books. Sorting them should be relatively easy, although my daughter is also a reader, so she might have a problem sorting out the ones she wants to keep.

Bill

My position is different from those you mentioned. My daughter lives in a rented house, while I live mortgage free. 20 years ago when my brother died I made a vow not to collect 'stuff'. I have been through the house several times trying to get rid of 'stuff'. It is of course a losing battle, but when I die I will not leave huge lots of stuff cluttering up the house. My daughter's main problem in that regard is deciding how to merge her furnishings into my house. Hopefully she will be able to just make the cut and then call the Salvation Army to take away what she doesn't need. And she has, unfortunately, just been through that experience. Her boy friend died and she had to separate his stuff from her stuff and get it appropriately dispersed.

So her big problem will be sorting my library, and she will be happy to have a lot of the books. Sorting them will be a chore, but not one that, hopefully, will call out a lot of memories.

Which doesn't mean that she won't be distressed by my passing, it just means that I will try to leave as little for her to do as I can.

Bill