Archiving Images with an Open Source Scanning Robot (Linux.com)

Project Gado is aimed at developing an autonomous archival scanning robot that will allow small archives and museums digitize holdings at a low cost and help preserve important documents and pictures. Linux.com takes a look at the project. ""Almost every aspect of the project uses some kind of open source tool," [project manager Thomas] Smith says. "Our robot control software is fully Linux compatible, and we run Ubuntu Linux on all our computers at the Afro. The Gado 2 uses the open source Arduino microcontroller, and all the components that we created – PCB, physical parts – are open source as well." The Gado also uses the open source Tesseract OCR engine to process materials, and the MySQL database system to store metadata. "Using open source tools allowed us to create the machine inexpensively, which is extremely important given our requirement that the final device cost less than $500," Smith says." Gado kits are available for pre-sale and are expected to be delivered in August.

---

(Log in to post comments)