The Solaris 1 Flashcanner
A Book and Document Scanner That Meet Unmet Needs
at a Glance
48 Megapixel Image Sensor
A3+ scanning coverage
USB-C 3.1 SuperSpeed
Base-Free architecture
All-metal body
flashcapture system
multidimensional page flattening
automatic capture
BARE finger image erasure
coming soon.
official release MSRP US$ 628 (S$ 816)
limited pre-order at US$328 (s$428) @ kickstarter.com
Unconventional Because the Conventional Needs Fixing
What’s Wrong with Overhead Scanners?
Despite their great advantages, they give inferior scans, poor usability and have unwieldy structures.
The Solaris 1 does not.
No less than 11 distinct features make it so.
Invisible Shield
156 flash LEDs brighten a page by a hundred fold during a scan to eliminate 99% of shadows, glare and coloration cast by ambient light.
It is like the scanner and book are being completely shielded, without a physical cover.
Base-Free Architecture
It attaches to its scanning platform via a sturdy metal coupling without a permanent base.
That makes for a streamlined structure which easily fits into bags or onto shelves.
48 Megapixel Camera
Every one of them is also paired with a high-performing lens selected via a rigorous performance test during production.
This ensures every unit has unrivaled resolving power to see the tiniest detail.
400g 16mm All-Metal Body
Being fully metal makes it durable despite being thin.
Being thin and compact makes it lightweight despite being metal.
USB 3 Super Speed
It uses true USB 3, not the typical USB 2.
Use it anywhere - it powers the system without needing batteries, power outlets or adapters.
Preservation of quality - it has enough speed to do away with degrading image compressions.
Flash Freezing
Its ultra-short LED activation duration effectively freezes motion.
Scans stay sharp despite finger slippage, page flutter or desk vibration.
Lasting just 1/1000th of a second, it is barely noticeable, runs cool, and consumes insignificant energy.
Angled Optics
Unlike any other, it does not look directly down at pages - it sees and illuminates them at calculated angles so that glares do not form on glossy paper.
The camera’s tilted perspective is then automatically and seamlessly corrected by an algorithm.
Multistage Page Flattening
Book pages contain not just lateral curvature, but twisting and dent as well, leaving behind residual distortions.
3 knowledge-based algorithms work together to identify and filter these residuals to produce near-perfect result.
Finger Image Erasure
Pages can be spread using bare fingers without gloves/cots or apparatuses.
It virtually sees through fingers via intelligent prediction and digital interpolation.
Nonlinear Shading
Book pages contain varying levels of background darkening (i.e. shading) due to their warpage.
To preserve background details and originality, it makes predictions based on intelligence from the flattening system, and applies nonlinear shading corrections across the page.
Automatic Capture
No scan button or foot pedal is required - it scans automatically right after flipping of a page.
Advanced page recognition and motion detection minimize trigger delay and false capturing.
Prototype Demonstration
The following video demonstrates the main capabilities of the Solaris 1 prototype.
Our Story
Why Did We Create This Scanner?
It started with a trigger. Most users of our last A4 model find it exceptional, but many regret that it had such a small scanning area. Some even DIY tweaked it to scan A3 despite our advice that scan sharpness would drop.
Those who could not get hold of one were also persistently urging us succeed it with another, apparently driven by substantial unmet needs. Most of them either preserve books or scan larger documents at multiple sites.
So that's that – our fate for the next 5 years was sealed.
There were daunting times within those years when we anxiously wondered if those needs were indeed unmet simply because there are no answers. But incremental successes, no matter how small, prompted us to hold on to the faith that those apparent impossibilities could be overcome, given sufficient perseverance.
Was it worth it? We don’t know. Yet.
But what we do know is this – our next apparent impossibility haunting us right now is the monumental task of raising enough awareness and acceptance of the Solaris 1 among the relevant communities in order for its mass production to be viable, given how small and budget limited we are.
Product Idea and Description
We have built a fully working prototype of the Solaris 1. These are what it gives:
Resolving Power
Why are some 32MP scans no sharper than 16MP ones?
High resolution scans should remain sharp even on closer look. But an often ignored fact is that resolving power also depends on optics, not just image sensors. This is despite lenses being the performance bottleneck.
Furthermore, 2 lenses of the same make may perform very differently, especially smaller ones used in overhead scanners due to their sensitivity to physical variances.
The Solaris 1 will have unrivalled 48MP sensors coupled with selected lenses. The selection process comprises not just the sharpness tests done during its development, but also each unit inspection and filtering during mass production.
Scan Quality
It isn’t all about sharpness - proper scans should also capture the essence of their originals.
Ambient light and curved book pages make scans look more like cropped photographs than anything else. They are the Achilles' heels of overhead scanners. Professional scanners counter them using huge covers and heavy glass platens. We wondered if more practical solutions exist. The answer is yes.
The FlashCapture System:
A shadow fades away when another much brighter light falls upon it.
So the scanner is made illuminate the pages by more than ten times that of typical ceiling lights.
The glare, power drain and heat would’ve been unrealistically excessive, but not when activated sufficiently short. We turned it on for just one thousandth of a second during capture, and it is hardly noticeable.
Multi-stage Flattening Algorithm:
Typical image-preserving page flattening software leave behind substantial residues of page curvature and distortions. Based on more than a hundred samples, we made a correlation between the residues to the physical attributes of the respective pages that we captured. The major culprits turned out to be page twisting and dents due to non-lateral forces applied by book binding and fingers. We created a multi-stage correction system that takes into account not just the pages’ lateral curvature, but also warpages in the other dimensions.
Meaningful Portability
Is a lightweight object portable? Not when it is clumsy.
So not only we made it 400g (14oz) light and 16mm thin, but also streamlined with no supporting base. It instead attaches to its scanning pad when in use.
Would one bring an AC powered device for use at public premises such as archives? Probably not.
Therefore we equipped it with USB 3 rather than the typical USB 2 (yes, most scanners still has that) which is able to power the whole system without needing batteries, power outlets or adapters. Its much higher speed enables it to do away with image-degrading compressions, which slower USB 2 devices rely on to shorten data transfer times.
Real Usability
It may seem easy to hold a hundred-page book with an outstretched arm for a minute, until one tries doing it.
The same goes for scanning it manually by a button or pedal, because it is not immediately obvious that tightly-bound pages often need to be held open, and pedals tire feet easily after repeated steps.
But auto-capturing systems very often prematurely or takes too long to trigger, if not fail entirely.
In order for it to reliably trigger at the exact moment when pages are ready, we created an advanced ready-page recognition system by incorporating motion detection, and a vast knowledge database obtained from studying actual instances of ready pages.
coming soon.
official release MSRP US$ 628 (S$ 816)
pre-order at US$328 (s$428) @ kickstarter.com
CONTACT US OR SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER HERE TO GET UPDATES ON AVAILABILITY AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS.
A Documentary Detailing Our Early Journey
Specifications
Runs on computers with:
Windows 10 & 11
MacOS X 10.8 or later (Beta upon launch, official 2 months after)
Linux Ubuntu 25.10 or later (Beta 6 months after launch, official 2 months after Beta)
Minimum Computer Requirement : Intel Core i3 processor or equivalent, 16GB RAM, 32GB free HDD space.
Scan Area : A3+ (14 x 20 inches)
Fully powered by USB 3 via USB-C Interface
Control & Communications : SuperSpeed USB 3.1
Scanner Weight : Approximately 400 grams (14 ounces)
Scanner Dimension (on stand, folded) : 280 x 65 x 16 mm (11 x 2.5 x 0.6 inches)
Imaging Sensor : CMOS Color RGB, 48 MP Bayer Array with Auto-focus Lens
Illumination : 156 Chip-On-Board LED Array, 13000 Lumens (Typ.)
Limitation
All automatic image processes and page detection applies only to book pages with no edge-printing (i.e. no ink printed at the top and bottom edges of page). Future support for edge-printed pages is possible and would be provided via software update.