(Archived) Setting up Canon MP530 scanner to go directly into Evernote

[davistroy 0]

Does anyone know how to configure the scanner on a Canon MP530 to go directly to Evernote? I can't get EN to show up as an option when pressing one of the HW buttons on the scanner.

I have gone into the scanner properties, but there is not a way to add a new action. Is there a registry hack or something I can use?

[iafanasyev 1]

Can you setup your scanner to put scanned images (in TIFF, JPG or BMP format) into some special folder upon pressing a hardware button?

If you can, then do so, then setup Auto-Import (Account > Import Wizard) to automatically monitor this folder for new files and put them into Evernote.

[dmwyatt 0]

This doesn't work because Evernote doesn't register itself as an STI-aware application.

I've spent all evening trying to figure out how to make this work on my Canon MP830, but the fact remains that you can't add applications to the applications that are displayed in the dialog to select applications to send scanned data to.

I'm trying the method iafanasyev mentioned, but the problem with that is that images aren't autocropped before they're saved which leads to lots of wasted space in Evernote and on disk.

[ljun 0]

Will the auto-import feature make it's way to the OS X version?

[craigfroehle 0]

I've submitted a similar feature request: add TWAIN awareness to Evernote so that it can suck in images directly from my webcam and scanner...no intermediate file creation needed. THAT would be the cat's pajamas, if you ask me.

[dmwyatt 0]

Ok, I created an AutoIt script to automate this.

I had two problems to resolve.

1. Because either Vista or the Canon drivers will NOT let the one-touch button work on my scanner without popping up a dialog box, I had to make AutoIt automatically click the correct options in the dialog. This is something that you may or may not have problems with and will have to customise the script to do what you want.

2. The one-touch button leaves me with an image of the whole platen instead of just the little receipt or whatever it is I scanned. This leads to large images both in file size and in the amount of screen space the note containing the image takes up in EN. To solve this I had to install ImageMagick and do some voodoo on the images to auto-crop them to the size of the actual item I scanned.

There's lots of stuff that probably would require explanation, but I'll just post my .au3 script and then if anyone has any questions just ask away. This should give anyone a good starting point for creating their own.

My workflow works like this:

1. I start my autoit script if it's not already running (I usually just leave it running as it takes basically 0% CPU time when waiting)

2. I press the scan button on my scanner.

...That's it. The script takes care of correctly cropping the image and moving it into the auto-import directory.

Here's the script. You just have to download AutoIt to run the script.

If you just want to see what I did you can open the script in any text editor (if the browser didnt display it when you clicked it).