CN1124566C - Scanner with portable data storage medium - Google Patents

Abstract

A self-contained scanner for a computer peripheral incorporates a portable data storage medium, such as a 3.5' floppy disk drive, high capacity disk drive or similar storage medium, and includes a control system having a digital data display and a control unit for controlling the mode of operation and resolution and generating, storing and displaying digital data.

Description

Scanner with portable data storage media

The invention relates to a scanner combined with a floppy disk, a high-capacity disk (Zip·drive) or similar portable data storage media.

Flatbed scanners and portable handheld scanners have been widely proposed. And the Sony brand Mavica digital camera is also used in combination with a portable digital data storage medium.

The object of the present invention is to provide a scanner combined with a portable digital data storage medium.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a stand-alone scanner combined with a 3.5" floppy disk drive as a portable digital data storage medium.

Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a reflective/transmissive scanner combined with a portable digital data storage medium.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a portable handheld scanner combined with a 3.5" floppy disk drive as a portable digital data storage medium.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a CCD or CIS scanner combined with a 3.5" floppy disk drive, a high-capacity disk drive or the same functional device as a portable digital data storage medium.

The purpose of the present invention is achieved by providing a scanner with a portable data storage medium for generating digital data of scanned document images, which includes a casing, a digital camera, and a control system, which includes a portable data storage media.

The advantage of the present invention is that the portable digital data storage medium is directly combined on the scanner, which can eliminate the need to be connected to the computer during the scanning process, and the document image can be converted into digital data by using the scanner of the present invention, and stored in a portable memory that can be removed from the scanner and subsequently used on a digital processor or computer not connected to the scanner at the time of scanning.

Below in conjunction with accompanying drawing, scan the embodiment of the present invention, wherein:

Fig. 1 is the perspective view of the first embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 2 is the perspective view of the second embodiment of the present invention;

3 is a perspective view of a third embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 4 is the plan view of control panel of the present invention;

Fig. 5 is a flow chart of the control program of the present invention.

Several embodiments of the present invention are illustrated with reference to FIGS. 1 to 5 . The present invention is aimed at the scanner around the computer. The existing scanner needs to be connected to the computer when scanning, so as to process the information captured and transmitted by the CIS (contact image sensor) or CCD (charged couple device) in the scanner. digital signal. The digital signal is processed by a computer and stored in a general storage medium, such as a hard disk, a 3.5" floppy disk, a high-capacity disk or other devices with the same function. The present invention combines the above-mentioned portable data storage medium in the scanner itself, that is, the storage device. Thus, the present invention allows the user to scan an image and store the digital data of that image on the portable memory of the scanner itself, thereby eliminating the need to be connected to a computer during the scanning process. The scanned image data Can be stored on portable storage such as a 3.5" disk. After the scan is complete, the disk can be removed from the scanner for further processing on another computer.

Referring to FIG. 1 , a general CCD type platform scanner 20 includes a housing 22 , a glass platform 24 and an upper cover 26 . A disk drive 28 can be inserted into a general 3.5" disk to store digital data during scanning. In addition, a control panel 32 is also displayed on the scanner shell, and the panel 32 will be further described with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4 .

Another embodiment of the present invention, shown with reference to FIG. 2, is the use of a CIS type scanner 34. As shown in FIG. The scanner 34 includes a housing 36 , a glass platform 38 , an upper cover 42 and a CIS module on a frame 40 . Housing 36 also incorporates a conventional disk drive, such as disk drive 44 into which conventional 3.5" disks 46 can be inserted.

Referring to FIG. 3 , a transmissive/reflective scanner includes a housing 52 , a reflective scanning platform 56 and a transmissive media fixing platform 54 . This transmissive/reflective type of scanner is disclosed in U.S. Patent No. 08/717,163, "Transmissive/Reflective Optical Scanning Apparatus," filed September 20, 1996, and in U.S. Pat. Patent No. 08/692,540 "Transmissive/Reflective Optical Scanning Apparatus" continuation case, patent No. 5,574,274. Referring to FIG. 3 , scanner 50 also incorporates a conventional disk drive that accepts generally preferably formatted 3.5″ disks. Housing 52 includes control panel 60 having a liquid crystal display (LCD) and multifunction buttons 64 .

Referring to Figure 4, a control panel 66 is shown having an LCD display 68 and several buttons. Control button 70 controls the mode of operation, such as color mode or black and white mode, and has indicator lights (LEDs) 72 and 74 . When the indicator light 72 is on, it represents the color mode, and when the indicator light 74 is on, it represents the black and white mode. The control button 78 controls the resolution of scanning, preferably including three options of high, medium and low. Indicator lights 80, 82, 84 indicate the selected high, medium, and low resolutions, respectively. The control button 86 is used to control whether the liquid crystal display 68 operates or not. "on" indicates that the liquid crystal display 68 can display images, and "off" indicates that the liquid crystal display 68 does not display images. The control button 88 is a delete button, which is used to delete the image data stored in the disk. The control button 76 controls the image display of the next image stored in the medium. Button 90 controls the data compression of the column data.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 3 , the control panel 60 includes multi-function control buttons 64 with "up, down, left, right". The user can use the multi-function control button 64 to control the cursor, and then select different control commands displayed on the LCD 62 .

Referring to FIGS. 1 to 4 , the scanner of the present invention provides reflective or penetrating scanning, and is flat-bed, paper-fed or palm-type scanning, and is the same as a general scanner, with different resolutions. But the present invention also provides the function of directly storing the scanned image digital signal in the portable memory on the scanner. Of course, the scanner can also be combined with the general way to directly transmit the digital data to the connected computer.

The combined portable memory of the scanner of the present invention is a well-known 3.5 "disk. Moreover, the present invention can also be combined with other general data storage media, such as flash memory card (flash memory card, such as PCMCIA card), high-capacity magnetic disk Machine (Zip-Drive, the O.R.Technology company of California Campbell, U.S., model is FD-3120A, the 3.5 " magnetic disk of 120MB, uses standard ATAPIIDE interface), also can use readable and writable optical disk drive. The capacity of a general 3.5″ disk is about 1.44MB, which can store about 30 to 40 standard resolution, color VGA, 640×480-dot images.

The standard or normal resolution for the flatbed scanners described herein is typically 300 dpi. When operating in color mode at this resolution, a general 3.5" disk can store about 10 to 12 images of standard letter paper (81/2×11") if current available data compression technology is used.

And it must be understood that the combination with a floppy disk drive etc. requires some modifications to the scanner, such as having to provide batteries and an AC power supply to the storage device. Regarding different types of portable storage media, a 3.5" floppy disk drive is most suitable, and a high-capacity disk drive that can hold about 100MB is also quite suitable.

Referring to FIG. 5 , it shows a flowchart of the control steps for controlling the data collection, display and storage features of the present invention. Each block represents an execution step, or a series of execution steps, wherein the execution steps can be general software, or (and) a program easily generated by ordinary programming skills. The control program 92 begins with a start function (start) of step 94, which is controlled by a conventional on/off power button, which is not shown in FIG. 4 . Once the system is started, a mode of operation is selected using step 96, either color or black and white. As shown in FIG. 4 , step 96 is selected by button 70 , and LED72 represents color mode operation, and LED74 represents black and white mode operation. Once the mode of operation is selected, the resolution is selected at step 98 , and in conjunction with button 78 , high resolution LED 80 , medium resolution LED 82 , and low resolution LED 84 are also displayed on the front of the control panel shown in FIG. 4 . For general scanners, the resolution is typically 300dpi, the high resolution is typically 600dpi or up to 1200dpi, and the low resolution is generally 100dpi.

Once the resolution is selected, the scanning starts at step 100. During the scanning, the carriage moves along the scanning direction, reads the image data through the CCD or CIS and converts them into digital data, refer to the scanning in Figure 4 Button 76. Once the image is scanned, the image data can be compressed through step 102, and a general compression program can be used, such as JPEG or other compression programs with similar functions. The present invention can combine a pre-determined single compression program in the software application program to control the operation of the scanner, and can also have multiple compression functions, using the control panel to select a special compression format. Once the data is compressed, the data can be stored in a portable digital data storage medium. Step 104 is the storage process. In addition, the data non-compression program in step 103 can also be selected. Data compression is controlled by button 90 in FIG. 4 . Once the data is stored on the storage medium, the status is displayed on the LCD, such as display 62 in FIG. 3 and display 68 in FIG. 4 , by step 106 . This stored data can be cleared using button 88 as described above.

Claims (8)

1. scanner with portable data storage medium, be used for producing the numerical data of scanned document image, it comprises shell, digital camera device, control system, it is characterized in that, described scanner comprises portable data storage medium, described control system comprises the control section of numerical data display and decision image scan resolution, and multifunction push key.

2. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described portable data storage medium is 3.5 " floppy disk drivers.

3. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described portable data storage medium is the high-capacity disk machine.

4. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described portable data storage medium is a flash memory cards.

5. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described portable data storage medium is the 120MB disk.

6. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described portable data storage medium is the CD player with write-in functions.

7. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described scanner is a Portable hand held scanner.

8. the scanner with portable data storage medium as claimed in claim 1 is characterized in that, described scanner is the paper feed type scanning device.

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