Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month’s Net Work brings readers a round-up of trends emerging in image scanners and the
fast-changing world of space and satellite technology.
T
hese days, images and video
are easily captured using
remarkably high-resolution
smartphones and digital cameras, and
images can be hosted either locally or on
the cloud. Occasionally though, legacy
artwork, photos or films crop up that
need digitising – faced with piles of
prints, 35mm slides or strips of negatives,
a flatbed scanner with a transparency
adaptor is the obvious answer.
Some readers doubtless remember the
‘three pass’ scanner (one pass per RGB
colour), which operated painfully slowly
via a PC parallel port or a ‘fast’ SCSI card.
30 years on, and a new addition arrived
in my worklab in the form of a flatbed
USB film scanner. Nothing out of the
ordinary, but research had showed that
flatbed scanners had gone the same way
as webcams in terms of price, support
and availability. There’s a dearth of available flatbed film scanners, and prices for
what seem like long-in-the-tooth legacy
units were high – if you could find one
at all, as some mainstream makers have
simply stopped making them.
There’s clearly some demand because
used ones fetch silly prices on eBay,
so I reluctantly paid a premium for a
highly regarded Epson V600 Photo
scanner because cheaper models like
the V550 weren’t available at all. Of
course, more time is then wasted figuring out differences in features and
wondering what more you actually get
for an extra 50% in price (the answer
is mainly the software bundle and
some infrared specs – see later). The
Epson V600 scanner has a transparency
backlight in the lid and is targeted at
semi-pro home users. The Camelizer
plug-in on Amazon.co.uk revealed
this model had been on the go for over
ten years; hopefully, it’s been updated
over time, but prices had gone up approximately 50% over the duration and
are touching £300 (or more) today (The
similar but unavailable V550 was £200).
So, this set some alarm bells ringing: if
it was launched in the era of Windows
7 or 8, how would it fare today under
Windows 10 or even Windows 11?
Regular PC users know that installing add-ons like scanners usually takes
either ten minutes or ten hours. Epson
clearly stated that it was W10 and W11
compatible, but my own research indicated what to expect if installing one
on a modern PC. Customer reviews
and forum posts revealed that several
users had complained of software lockups under Windows 10 and eventually
some deep links to updated drivers were
found: in Epson’s case, these should be
installed before connecting the scanner,
so I downloaded them in advance, ready
for when the scanner arrived.
Back to the future
My installation initially went perfectly
under Windows 10, despite having an
Epson all-in-one printer also installed
on the same PC. I found I could select
the V600 scanner in both the 32-bit and
64-bit versions of PaintShop Pro. (Therein lies another undocumented problem:
legacy scanner TWAIN drivers, as well
as expensive plug-in graphics filters,
are often only compatible with 32-bit
graphics software. Happily, PaintShop
Pro provides both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for backwards compatibility: I run
both versions on the same PC mainly for
that reason.)
The scanner is fast
and accurate but, disappointingly, some
o f t h e s c a n n e r ’s
Help resources were
very dated HTML
pages that looked
like a throwback to
Epson’s film-capable mid-range
V600 Photo scanner with transparency unit.
Film scanner choices are becoming limited as
users migrate over to digital media.
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Kodak’s Mini Digital Film and Slide Scanner will
digitise images at the press of a button and
store them on a memory card. (Amazon.co.uk)
Windows XP, and unsurprisingly the
software instructions did not cover the
entirely new version I’d tried under Windows 10. Oddly, some major documented
scanner features and functions were missing altogether. One of them was Epson’s
highly regarded Digital Image Correction
and Enhancement (ICE), which can help
remove ‘stubborn dust marks’ on some
types of film. Such ICE-enabled scanners
contain infrared hardware to highlight
specks of dust and scratches ‘invisibly’
and digitally erase them from the raw
image, which is why you buy them: the
Digital ICE option was not available in
the latest Epson driver. The familiar old
‘Home’ or ‘Professional’ setting modes
weren’t there either.
Eating into those ten hours, more
trials with legacy drivers eventually
cured the problem, for now at least.
Although the supplied ‘Epson Scan’
software on CD was showing its age,
it did include Digital ICE options. It
seems the latest ‘Scan 2’ update does
not. Full Auto, Home and Professional
modes were restored on my W10 setup
too. The software’s dated, but it works,
though the signs are less promising for
Windows 11 upgraders. One forum user
stated that Epson offered them a lite version of professional Silverfast software
(www.silverfast.com) as it includes
iSRD (infrared-based Dust & Scratch
Removal). If ICE is a ‘must-have’ then
Silverfast SE will set you back another
€ 49. For many flatbed scanner owners
though, the go-to source for universally
Practical Electronics | April | 2022
compatible and sophisticated scanner
software is undoubtedly VueScan. Its
features include ‘infrared cleaning’ and
it can drive nearly 6,000 scanners, even
obsolete ones. VueScan’s Professional
edition (for slides and film) costs £70.
VueScan’s user manual can be browsed
at: https://bit.ly/pe-mar22-vue
If a flatbed scanner isn’t for you, a
number of little standalone film scanners is available, some having a built-in
LCD screen. They may be ideal projects
for non-computer users, and some can
even copy images from 8mm and Super
8 cine film manually, frame by frame.
They scan at the press of a button and
files are saved to an SD card. The KODAK
Mini Digital Film and Slide Scanner at
£129.99 is worth a look, and there are
many imported models to choose from,
ranging from £60 or £70 or so. Reviews
are very mixed though, so check them
out carefully.
Owners of Epson’s higher-end scanners might like to know that third-party
film adaptors are available on eBay, Etsy
and Amazon. These 3D-printed holders enable legacy formats such as 110,
126, 127, APS, Brownie or even Kodak
Disc films to be digitised. As the supply
of flatbed scanners becomes ever more
limited, now might be the time to grab
one while you can.
Onwards and upwards
In September 2021’s issue I wrote about
Sir Richard Branson’s space launch venture, Virgin Orbit, which uses a specially
adapted 747 jumbo jet to place satellites
into orbit. In January, the Cosmic Girl
747 carrying the LauncherOne rocket
vehicle flew from the Mojave Air and
Space Port and completed a third successful mission, lofting seven satellites
into orbit – the first time this orbit has
been reached by launching from the West
Coast, the company says. The Virgin Orbit
flight had an RAF pilot at the helm and,
by reaching further out over the ocean,
it was able to follow a trajectory that a
ground-launched vehicle would hitherto
have found impossible. This shortcut to
space saves time and fuel that satellites
would otherwise have expended before
reaching their target orbit.
Additionally, the 747 flew through
weather conditions that would have
grounded a conventional launchpad
operation, and Virgin Orbit’s mode of
operation was also able to offer a very
rapid turnaround for a last-minute satellite customer, they say: no need to
wait for ‘a full bus of passengers’ before
heading into space.
Trade sources say that one satellite
– the ADLER-1, an acronym for ‘Austrian Debris Detection Low Earth (Orbit)
Reconnoiter’ – was built in Glasgow,
Practical Electronics | April | 2022
Scotland by the US
satellite company
Spire Global before
being shipped to
the US for launching. Partnering
with the Austrian
Space Forum and
Findus Venture
GmbH, the sensors on board the
ADLER-1 satellite Autoflight’s eVTOL Prosperity I flying over London (artist’s impression).
are dedicated to tracking ‘micro space Taxiing to take off
Anyone who hails a cab for trips around
debris’ that is orbiting the Earth.
According to infographics published town may be offered another travel
by the United Nations Office for Outer choice in the future: a flying shared
Space Affairs (UNOOS) at https://tinyurl. ‘taxi’ is being introduced by Autoflight,
com/ycecrhxk, there are 2,700 satellites the Chinese builders of electric vertical
sharing their orbits with 8,800 tonnes of take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles.
space junk including nearly 5,000 defunct Autoflight produces a range of industrial
satellites and rocket stages. Although eVTOL unmanned cargo drones and is
these large objects can be tracked from now turning its attention to building a
manned passenger-carrying craft called
ground stations, there are estimated to be
another 128 million small items of debris ‘Prosperity I’. The proposed electric air
measuring 1mm to 1cm that travel like taxi would have a range of about 250km
bullets and cannot be tracked from the and would carry three passengers along
ground. ADLER-1 is a cubesat measur- with (phew!) a pilot. Autoflight’s Euroing just 30 x 10 x 10cm and will use an pean R&D hub is being established near
innovative short-range CW radar that Munich and the company is currently
has not been tried in space until now, seeking European airworthiness cerand a piezo-electric array will detect mi- tification for its aircraft, with the aim
croparticles, also estimating the energy of starting passenger services in 2025.
they impart on impact.
Virgin Orbit has now completed three Aldi chasing Amazon
Following hard on the heels of Amazon’s
successful missions and has chalked up
some repeat business as well. Back home Just Walk Out retail stores mentioned
here in Britain, the next milestone of before in Net Work, the German superthe UK National Space Strategy should market chain Aldi, now the fifth biggest
be reached in Summer this year, when store brand in the UK, has opened its
it’s expected that Virgin Orbit will com- first ‘cashierless store’ for public testmence flights from Spaceport Cornwall ing in Greenwich, London. Called Aldi
(https://spaceportcornwall.com), the first Shop&Go, it uses camera technology proof a series of specially adapted airstrips vided by AiFi (https://aifi.com/) along
around the country that will enable satel- with an obligatory mobile app that tots
up the shopping trolley automatically
lites to be launched into LEO with none
of the drawbacks of launchpad-based before charging your account on exit.
missions. The UK Government’s stated Those wanting to buy a ‘Challenge 25
intention is to capture the European product’ like alcohol can opt for an AI
facial age recognition scan provided by
small satellite launch market by 2030.
Many readers might know that Corn- the secure digital ID platform Yoti (or a
wall played host in 1901 to Marconi’s real human can check the buyer’s age).
A ring of bogus product reviewers
first transatlantic radio message broadcast to Newfoundland using a spark based in Germany has been broken up
transmitter (see https://en.wikipedia. after Amazon obtained High Court inorg/wiki/Poldhu). Cornwall is also junctions against its operators. Some
home to the Goonhilly Down ground 20,000 reviewers in the UK alone were
station, whose fine heritage started said to be giving five-star reviews after
with receiving the world’s first trans- receiving products for which they were
atlantic TV signal in 1962 via Telstar, subsequently re-imbursed.
Finally, do check the Net Work blog on
the first communications satellite. In
1977, Goonhilly Down played a criti- the PE website (www.electronpublishing.
cal role in the roll-out of the Internet com), where the links mentioned above
are ready made for you. You might also
as we know it today – more history
is at: www.goonhilly.org/ges-heritage. find reader feedback and more updates
there too. See you next month!
More recently, Cornwall held out the
tantalising prospect of mining its own
The author can be reached at:
lithium, as mentioned in earlier colalan<at>epemag.net
umns – Cornwall is quite the place to be!
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