u/adldotori

A while ago, I asked a few e-reader communities what stops people from digitizing their physical books. The most common answer was simple: scanning hundreds of pages manually takes too much time.

So I’ve been building Kiro, a Raspberry Pi-based prototype that turns and captures book pages without cutting or removing the binding.

The current device uses a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, a Camera Module 3 Wide, servo-driven arms, and an air-suction page-turning mechanism. It captures each open spread, separates the left and right pages, corrects page curvature, tilt and color, then runs OCR and produces a text EPUB.

We recently started a very small 7-day free rental pilot with three users in Korea. International rentals are not available yet, and I’m not collecting overseas sign-ups here. I just wanted to share the moment when the project finally moved from my workbench into real homes.

It is still very much a prototype:

- A 300-page book currently takes about 3.5 hours.

- Some books still require occasional checks or retries.

- Coated paper, damaged books, unusual bindings and large formats can be difficult.

- Making one page turn is relatively easy. Making hundreds of page turns reliably without skips or double turns is the real challenge.

The attached video shows one actual page turn on the current prototype.

I’m happy to share more about the Raspberry Pi capture and control setup if people are interested.

https://reddit.com/link/1voyops/video/k9158c71gijh1/player

A lot of e-reader discussion is about devices, but I’m curious about the source material problem.

If you own physical books that don’t have good ebook versions, have you ever tried digitizing them yourself?

If not, what stops you?

For me, the biggest blocker seems like the manual page-by-page capture: holding the book open, taking photos/scans, turning pages, checking order, fixing shadows, repeating it for an entire book.

Is that the main reason most people don’t digitize their own books, or is the real issue later: OCR quality, PDF/EPUB formatting, file management, or just not wanting scanned books on an e-reader?

I’m curious if anyone else has this problem.

I have physical books that I’d probably read more if they were on my Kindle, especially older or niche books without a good ebook version. But the idea of scanning or photographing every page by hand makes me give up before I start.

For people who have tried it: was the annoying part mainly the page-by-page work? Turning pages, keeping the book flat, checking page order, fixing shadows, doing it for hundreds of pages?

Or do you actually get through the scanning part, and the real pain comes later with OCR/PDF/formatting?

I have some legally owned physical books that I’d like to make searchable and manage in Calibre, but the part that stops me is not really Calibre itself.

It’s the manual capture step: opening the book, holding pages flat, taking a photo/scan, turning the page, checking I didn’t skip or double-capture anything, then repeating that hundreds of times.

For people who have tried scanning their own books, is that physical page-by-page process the main reason you don’t digitize more books? Or is the bigger pain OCR, cleanup, metadata, or device transfer later?

I’m trying to understand whether book scanning is a real library workflow problem or just a niche hobbyist problem.

I’ve seen libraries use overhead scanners for local history, special collections, interlibrary loan, patrons scanning personal material, and staff digitization projects. But I don’t know what the day-to-day pain actually looks like.

I’m working on an early non-destructive scanner prototype that turns one page at a time and captures automatically. The goal would be to reduce staff/patron babysitting, not to replace review or preservation judgment.

For librarians or library staff:

1. Do patrons ask for book/document scanning often?
2. Is staff time the bottleneck, or is equipment quality/software/review the bigger issue?
3. Would automatic page turning be helpful, or would it be too risky for public/patron use?
4. Would privacy/offline processing be a requirement?
5. What would make a scanner practical for a public library: durability, easy training, low maintenance, accessibility, export formats, price?

I’m not trying to sell anything here. I’m trying to understand whether this belongs in libraries at all, and what would make it useful rather than another device staff have to babysit.

I’m not building an AI notes app or another cloud wrapper. I’m trying to understand the capture/archive side of physical books.

For owned, public-domain, or permissioned bound material, what would you want a proper digitization workflow to preserve?

My rough guess:
- raw page images
- processed/cropped page images
- searchable PDF
- OCR text
- metadata
- checksums
- logs for missing/duplicate pages
- manual review notes
- maybe a folder structure that can survive outside any app

I’m working on an early non-destructive scanner prototype that turns one page at a time and captures automatically. The question I’m trying to answer is whether automatic page turning actually matters to people who archive books, or whether the hard part is still QC, OCR, metadata, and long-term file organization.

For people who have digitized books/manuals/old documents: where does the workflow really break?

I’m working on a non-destructive book scanning workflow and trying to understand a very specific problem:

Web articles, PDFs, and Kindle highlights are relatively easy to get into Obsidian/Notion/Readwise. Physical books are where my PKM workflow breaks.

I’m trying to talk to people who have actually tried turning physical books into searchable notes, Markdown, highlights, or a personal knowledge base.

A few questions:

1. Have you ever wanted to bring a physical book into your vault or second brain?
2. Would you care more about full OCR, highlights/quotes, summaries, or clean page images?
3. What would make the output “good enough” for your real workflow?

Zotero handles clean PDFs beautifully. Physical books, scanned chapters, course packets, and older printed material are harder.

For researchers using Zotero:

1. Do you keep scans in Zotero at all?

2. What matters most: OCR text, page image quality, ISBN/DOI metadata, annotations, or citation fields?

3. If a bound book becomes a searchable PDF, what metadata would make it useful rather than clutter?

I’m looking at non-destructive scanning for owned/public-domain/permissioned material and trying to understand the real research workflow.

I use Obsidian heavily, but physical books are still awkward.

I can manually type notes. I can photograph a few pages. I can run OCR. But for an actual book or even a full chapter, the capture process is enough friction that I usually just don’t do it.

Curious if others feel the same.

For physical books:

1. Do you only capture your own notes/highlights, or do you ever want the source text too?

2. Have you abandoned a book-to-Obsidian workflow because scanning was too tedious?

3. Would mostly automated scanning change anything for you, or is manual note-making the point?

4. How many pages/books would make automation worth caring about?

Only asking about owned/public-domain/permissioned material.

I’m researching a problem around physical books and reading workflows.

Kindle, Reader, and web highlights flow nicely into Readwise and Obsidian. But physical books still require manual typing, photos, or messy OCR. I’m exploring a non-destructive scanning workflow that could turn physical books into OCR text, quotes, highlights, or Markdown.

I’m curious:

1. Do you read physical books but wish the highlights could end up in Readwise/Obsidian?

2. Is full-book OCR valuable, or are highlights and quotes enough?

3. What export format would you actually use?

I’m working on a non-destructive book scanning workflow and trying to understand a very specific problem:

Web articles, PDFs, and Kindle highlights are relatively easy to get into Obsidian/Notion/Readwise. Physical books are where my PKM workflow breaks.

I’m trying to talk to people who have actually tried turning physical books into searchable notes, Markdown, highlights, or a personal knowledge base.

A few questions:

1. Have you ever wanted to bring a physical book into your vault or second brain?

2. Would you care more about full OCR, highlights/quotes, summaries, or clean page images?

3. What would make the output “good enough” for your real workflow?