Dear friends, As requested by many members after my first mail on this portable scanner I would like to submit a test report. This is a preliminary test report. The device is a good option for bulk scanning by sighted persons and volunteers. Also it is a first mainstream device like this so there is a huge scope in its improvement and better application in future. Following is my report pasted as below.
Test report on I-ball QuickScan scanner. Testing done by XRCVC team consisting of Prashant Naik and Salim Shaikh XRCVC, Mumbai Dates - from 4th to 9th December 2010 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cost - MRP Rs. 7450/- Available with I-Ball dealers. Website - www.iball.co.in http://iball.co.in/Product.aspx MORE SPECIFICATIONS Smart and Portable Increase your productivity Features: Document Scanner - Captures any document up to A4 size at high resolution in about one second. Object Photos - It can capture an object up to A4 size in one second. Copier - It can capture a document or an object up to A4 size in one second. The captured document can be printed out via any printer. Presenter - To project a paper document or a real object to the large screen using PC or laptop. Video Recording - Its video recording function can record the progress of any operation or demo. OCR Function - Optical Character Recognition feature helps in conversion of images of text into characters which can be edited. Image Sensor: 2 Mega pixel CMOS Active Pixel Digital Image Sensor Scanner Type: Foldable and Contactless Portable Document Scanner Page Support: Up to A4 Size Image Resolution: 1600 x 1200 pixels Frame Rate: Variable with selected screen size. VGA 30 fps at resolution of 640 x 480 Scan Speed: One-click-scan, in a fraction of a second Interface: USB 2.0 Interface Image Formats: JPG, BMP, TIF, PDF, GIF, PNG, TGA, PCX. Light: Ambient light View Angle: 55 Degree Lens: 3G1P + IR Annotation and OCR Built-in OCR feature via software Power Supply: DC 5V from USB Bundled Accessories: Portable Scanner, Driver CD, USB Cable, Soft Pad. OS Supported: Windows XP/VISTA/7. Certifications: CE, FCC, RoHS Weight: 600g MRP: Rs. 7450 Warranty: 1 Year Document scanner A4 size Photo capture A4 size in 1 second Very portable and foldable No adapter required. USB powered Image adjustments Weight 600 g Operating system windows xp / vista / 7 Office 2003 or office 2007 with all features installed needed for OCR function HOW TO USE I-BALL QUICKSCAN You need to connect this device to computer USB port. (a USB driven) device. You have a CD in your pack which has an application called ClickScan ver 2.4. (8 MB setup file) You need to install this program to operate the device. Without this program also it can be operated with Fine Reader, Open Book or Kurzweil OCR programs. But this way of operation is very very cumbersome and not really useful for mass scanning. TEST FINDINGS Overall Grade (A - average, B - bad, C - very bad) Answer. Grade ‘B’ and ‘A’ both (it is bad because we thought that it is a replacement for Zoom-Ex but it is an average device as a camera scanner operated by sighted) TEST CASES 1. Without any assistive device (screen reader) both in static and video mode or use of this device by a sighted. For good, clean and flat books one can do fast capturing of images. These images are stored in c:\program files\i-ball\photos folder. OCRing on these images can be done with a good OCR software like Abby Fine reader. Sighted can check the image quality and the focus area as view is shown on the screen. The Problems observed with I-ball ClickScan ver 2.4 application No or limited key board access. Every time you need to go to menu to click on ‘Scan’ menu command. All captured images are not shown in the left side bar. i.e. Thumbnail View. When double click on the workspace area it gives unnecessary error messages. Always default image resolution is 96 dpi which is too less for document scanning. You have to change it to the 300 dpi in settings dialog for every new job. It will not remember old setting or make this as default. You have to many a times close the application for starting a new job. There is no ‘new scan or document’ option in the file menu. Suggestions: Scan option is only available in menu it should be available thru key board shortcut or single key. I-ball has not developed its own OCR engine. Bu it uses Microsoft document Image Processing OCR system. Keyboard shortcuts and single scan key should be provided. Blue color dialogs and buttons control should be made as a standard windows control. Menu should be more accessible with keyboard. Only alt key is not working. You need some frame or boundaries (similar to zoom-ex legs) at the base to make sure that your pages are within the range of scan area. Also if device is little moved or changes its direction the image can go out of focus area. So a screen view is important for a user. One more thing observed is this device has a horizontal top for lense which results in adding shadow on the page in the center area. This Is or can disturb OCR output. ------------------------------------------ 2. Without any assistive device both in static with fine reader Scanned images can be opened and read in Fine reader. But using fine reader to scan and read is not so good option. This device uses windows “capture picture to video” dialog which has four buttons and two image preview windows. With capture button you can capture current image. In the right hand side preview you can see all the images including old scanned images. (This is a problem). Select all button is not a toggle and really does not work in fine reader as it only adds few or one images in the list. Get capture button is used to add images and close this dialog. Same dialog appears in Kurzweil and open book program. Preview and select options are not screen reader friendly. ----------------------------------- 3. Video mode as a screen magnifier or CCTV. Static and video mode zoom, etc. When you do video recoding its don’t show on screen after save you can see the recoding. You can’t use this device as CCTV. When you take a image then its give zoom option. ---------------------------- 4. With JAWS its own application. OCR Microsoft application. What are the difficulties with screen reader JAWS Use of screen reader JAWS in i-ball application is not very friendly. Menus are spoken but not perfectly. It reads as context menus. Also alt key to access menu does not work. Dialogs are not so readable. For OCR it opens Microsoft document imaging application. Being a standard Microsoft application it is JAWS friendly. ---------------------- 5. With OCR assistive software like Open Book, Kurzweil, Fine Reader, etc. Kurzweil / open book / fine reader can be used for opening captured images and then recognize. But it is not worth at this moment to use this device with these applications for scanning and reading directly. OCR results During scanning we have observed that sometimes layout is not maintained. Also if page is not kept absolutely flat then your images results with skewed text lines which results in a bad OCR output. --------------------------------------- 7. Any qualitative comments In ideal scenario this device is an image capturing device. This device is right now can be used as an image capture device mainly by sighted people. Other Advantages Image to pdf option in the menu is available. Can save different types of images jpeg, tiff, etc. Can do automatic image capturing job. End of report -------------------------------------------------------- On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Prashant Naik <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear Mukesh, > > You are right one needs to thoroughly test new devices for its > robustness and accessibility for VI. Also find whether is it worth > investing in it? That’s where at XRCVC we try and test new devices. > We are a very first buyer of his unit in Mumbai. We got this sample > unit on Saturday afternoon. So still working and testing it. Do not > want to make any comments at this moment unless I myself test it with > various test scenarios and environments / programs. Soon I will > write my findings about ClickScan to the list. > > Regards, > Prashant Naik > -------------------------------- > > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 4:33 PM, korbamukesh <[email protected]> wrote: >> hello sir, >> it was good to know that there are more devices likely to come in the >> market as portable scanners. because, i find it very convenient to >> move around with my laptop and portable scanner to get it scan the >> handy pages at our finger tips. >> >> as i am appearing for my higher studies examination, i need to scann >> lot of books, journals, papers etc while visiting the libraries. >> >> for this purpose, i have once used one scanner of cannon light 25 >> which turned to be not advisable for multiple scanning. because, after >> scanning few pages say five or ten the scanner device used to go slow >> down and sometimes stop working for few minutes. while enquiring with >> my dealer, he informed me that this scanner is meant only for scanning >> bills, memos etc but not for continuous scanning of books. >> >> another difficulties was that the menus of the scanning program of my >> cannon product were not accessible. but after configuring this device >> with fine reader, i could easily locate the scan command with this >> device. >> >> so if possible, kindly let me know the product updates at your end if >> you have tried scanning multiple pages with this device. i am very >> keen to have such product. >> >> if possible, also share with me the dealer information in mumbai. >> >> regards, >> mukesh. >> >> On 12/4/10, Prashant Verma <[email protected]> wrote: >>> More similar devices are expected very soon. We are testing a portable >>> scanner which has similar features and is likely to be out in the market in >>> the coming months. >>> >>> More details on ClickScan are given below from its website >>> http://iball.co.in/Product.aspx?s=2 >>> Iball portable scanner named ClickScan >>> Features: •Document Scanner – Captures any document up to A4 size at high >>> resolution in about one second. >>> •Object Photos - It can capture an object up to A4 size in one second. >>> •Copier - It can capture a document or an object up to A4 size in one >>> second. The captured document can be printed out via any printer. >>> •Presenter - To project a paper document or a real object to the large >>> screen using PC or laptop. >>> •Video Recording - Its video recording function can record the progress of >>> any operation or demo. >>> •OCR Function – Optical Character Recognition feature helps in conversion of >>> images of text into characters which can be edited. >>> Image Sensor: 2 Mega pixel CMOS Active Pixel Digital Image Sensor >>> Scaanner Type: Foldable and Contactless Portable Document Scanner >>> Page Support: Up to A4 Size >>> Image Resolution: 1600 x 1200 pixels >>> Frame Rate: Variable with selected screen size. VGA 30 fps at resolution of >>> 640 x 480 >>> Scan Speed: One-click-scan, in a fraction of a second >>> Interface: USB 2.0 Interface >>> Image Formats: JPG, BMP, TIF, PDF, GIF, PNG, TGA, PCX. >>> Light: Ambient light >>> View Angle: 55 Degree >>> Lens: 3G1P + IR >>> Power Supply: DC 5V from USB >>> Annotation and OCR Built-in OCR feature via software >>> Bundled Accessories: Portable Scanner, Driver CD, USB Cable, Soft Pad. >>> OS Supported: Windows XP/VISTA/7. >>> Certifications: CE, FCC, RoHS >>> Weight: 600g >>> MRP: Rs. 7450 >>> Warranty: 1 Year >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -------------------------------------------------- >>> From: "Prashant Naik" <[email protected]> >>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 5:08 PM >>> To: <[email protected]> >>> Subject: [AI] I-ball ClickScan_Instant Scanner >>> >>>> Dear Friends, >>>> >>>> Today at XRCVC we got one more instant scanner device. It is not a >>>> specialized device like zoom-ex but a mainstream product from I-ball >>>> called ClickScan (a USB driven, small and portable). The i-ball >>>> application to capture and do other operations is not keyboard >>>> friendly or JAWS accessible. But a sighted can use it with mouse. It >>>> has many features like scanner, copier, ocr, presenter and video >>>> recorder, etc. This is an instant scanner device. This is very >>>> recently launched and costs around 6000/- >>>> >>>> One can use it with fine reader and do very fast scanning. A good >>>> option for libraries and resource centers for doing mass scanning. >>>> >>>> We are still exploring it but thought to share this info with the list >>>> as it is exciting that for the price of 1/10th we have one option. >>>> About the accuracy we need to test thoroughly but is decent, no idea >>>> on exact resolution and scanned image quality. I think I-ball has >>>> come up with this product for fast photo scanning. Anyway we can try >>>> and if it’s helpful for us we can start using it. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Prashant >>>> >>>> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] >>>> with the subject unsubscribe. >>>> >>>> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, >>>> please visit the list home page at >>>> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >>>> >>> >>> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with >>> the subject unsubscribe. >>> >>> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please >>> visit the list home page at >>> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >>> >> >> To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with >> the subject unsubscribe. >> >> To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please >> visit the list home page at >> http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in >> > To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. 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