In what can only be described as a whole bunch of awesome, the folks at Dexter Industries have demonstrated a system to digitise books based on some simple and easy-to-find hardware, namely LEGO and a Raspberry Pi. The RPi can easily control the LEGO to flip and hold down the book pages, and then use a camera to capture each page as an image. Finally with some OCR software the page is digitised for digital storage - or used for text-to-speech. You can see this through the following video:
Apart from having a lot of fun, this would be an inexpensive method of creating audio files for the visually-impaired or blind. For more information, visit the project tutorial site. And for more, we're on facebook, Google+, and twitter - so follow us for news and product updates as well.
If you're looking for a more permanent way to mount circuitry to your Raspberry Pi, check out our new PiBreak - the prototyping board for the Raspberry Pi. It provides labelled breakout pins for all GPIOs, a large prototyping area with solder pads, and power rails for easy power connection:
Furthermore the PiBreak also includes mounting hardware to firmly attach it to your Raspberry Pi using a nut, bolt, and spacer - and is compatible with all revisions of both model A and B Raspberry Pi computers. For more information about our new PiBreak board, our Getting Started guide, and to order - visit the product page.