Web camera as a paper tape reader?

[Ole Juul]

tingo: I tried to find a paper tape reader at a reasonable price, or one that I could build with components that are available at a reasonable price. When that failed, it sparked an interest in finding a general way to read paper tapes today.

It's always fun to come up with ideas and play with stuff too.

tingo: I have only three tapes; and they contains some of my old school projects and such, so I hardly think that others have an interest.

In this case perhaps you could just mail them to somebody with a reader who could then put the info in an easily transferable file. That wouldn't be as much fun but it sounds like it would meet your primary need.

 

[tingo]

using a scanner to read paper tapes

using a scanner to read paper tapes

Has anyone here got experience with those small business card scanners? Or some other usb scanner that automatically feeds the paper through.
Does it feed the paper straight all the time?
It seems that such a scanner wold be good for reading paper tapes, if one could coax it into working without the specialized software.

 

[nathan]

Here's a silly idea...

How about using an array of 9 LEDs, mounted quite close to the tape so that they each only shine through one hole...

Then put one photodiode on the bottom, and use a multiplexing scheme to cycle through the LEDs rapidly.

Sounds like a job for a PIC or Arduino