Hi, it's dumpster diving time again. I scored this Epson Gt 1500 scanner. I showed this on Twitter sitting on top of the uh dumpster down there and some people said nets worthless? don't bother. But then I did a quick uh, ebay search of this and sure enough it's still a current model.

It's on the Epson website and it's about 450 bucks. Brand new and it's a flatbed scanner with A4 sheet feeder on it. which is you know they're not that common to get them, just the scanner itself. Usually they're just a flatbed jobby but this one has the sheet feeder as well.

So even though it looks old, it is still a current model and it's got Usb interface. Like there's no like usb stick or anything. you can't scan directly to a usb stick but uh yeah it's got the Usb A's on it. And the other thing I like about it is that if I can get my hand out of the shot here, you can.

Actually it doesn't just hinge like that, it actually lifts up at the back so you can put like large books and things and Pcbs by the way. scanners are great for um, scanning Pcbs so you can put you know, not that big but you can put like reasonable size stuff in there on the scanner bed. So yeah that's I think it's just really nice. but anyway, um I was going to pair it up and test it, but this bloody thing.

check this out right? looks you know, fairly. Yeah it's a 24 volt input which is a little bit strange for a scanner. I'll leave it in the comments. If you've got one, um, similar and you know it's a barrel jack of, uh, some description and you know I thought, oh yeah, no worries, Um, I couldn't find the Uh plug pack for it.

Pro dumpster diving Tip: Always search for the plug packs and remote controls for Tvs and other things. Couldn't find it so I thought, no worries, You know I've got a big, huge array of adapters. Not a single one fits it. And then I checked, of course, my uh, extensive collection of multiple tubs plural of uh, plug packs.

And sure enough, I'm not. No, I don't have anything that fits it, let alone, uh, 24 volts. So um, yeah, it's like, I can. I kind of have to boat something.

Either boat something together or maybe as I'm going to do now, I'm just going to tear the thing apart because, well, why not? I'm assuming it works and it's just surplus to requirements now as most of the stuff is I find in the dumpster probably you know, more than 95 of stuff I find in there works. So yeah, this, um, and I lost my little Epson Usb scanner. It was Usb powered. It was quite nice.

Um, I lost that in my move somewhere so I don't know if I tossed it or if I accidentally gave it away in the big uh giveaway of the old move now the old lab or whatnot. But yeah, I don't have a scanner. The only thing I've got. I'll show you this is the only thing I've got left, which is, uh, huge.

Um, I wasn't going to pick this up. This was also a dumpster find. Almost all of my Pc stuff is, uh, dumps defined. Um, this is an A3 color laser and it's got a scanner on the top, but it's clunky.

It's only 600 dpi. It's not very good, but this bad boy here is 1200 dpi and 48-bit color depth. So uh, you know, 16 bits per color. So it seems to have like pretty good specs as far as um scanners go.

So yeah, I want to get it working. But bloody plug pack anyway and other dumpster printers that I use I've got this Hp Laserjet 5200 which is my, uh, invoice printer for all my packing and shipping stuff. works great. Built like a tank and this is my backup color laser printer I got from the dumpster Fuji, Xerox, something or other.

It's a Docuprint C2120 and I don't use this at the moment. it's just a backup. Um, it's only A4 color, but it still works. A treat as all my dumpster stuff does.

Anyway, that's enough dumpster flex in. uh, let's take this one apart, shall we? Oh, made in Indonesia? How do I have yours in Indonesia? Um, don't get much of that. Um, it's the Gtd 1000 so I guess they did share the same chassis in the series but takes 1.3 amps. uh, 24 volts.

The bloody thing's the connector though. actually the only problem I see with this. I'm not sure if you're seeing that there's a mark on it and that's not on the top, that's on the bottom. So um, I don't know if that'll sweep out if the uh, like this scanner um comes out of the thing.

So like you know, sweeps across and it might get rid of it. I don't know. Anyway, Um, so here's the window for the sheet feeder. and apparently that only does 600 dpi.

whereas if you want 1200, you've got to put a flat on the bed. But I guess for like scanning like mass scanning documents, you probably don't want the 1200 sort of stuff. You know it's when you're scanning photos and things like that that you want the real high-res stuff. For some reason there's a little window here that pops off and you can get the uh connectors off that go up to the top uh, sheet feeder? That's nice.

Interestingly, it only has uh, screws at the back along the back here. It doesn't have any at the front and it's all just uh, clippity doo da. So I'm going to lay this down and hopefully this comes out because there's not much in these suckers. But yeah, Oh yep.

Yep. Yep. there we go. We're in beauty.

There ain't much, but it means I can get that pesky little dust out. And yeah, so I'll give the give the bottom of that screen a a good wiper diaper. Just got the main art i you know transport, linear rotor whatever it's called and a belt to drive the sucker. And looks like they got a little platform like a tensioner platform.

and uh oh yeah, no that can. It can slide a bit, but it's yeah. Actually it does. Yeah, it, it slides.

Those screws aren't really holding that in place. You see a little bit of wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah in there. So there you go. It's just keeping that uh, spring is just keeping tension on that pulley.

That's quite nice. Sorry, this is not going to be a complete, uh tear down because I do want this, um, sucker to, uh, work. I don't you know, Like there's nothing in it. so it looks like the main board is just down the bottom down there.

And uh, there's our linear um array head. This is a Ccd one I believe. now that, uh, newfangled stuff. And there's our stepper motor.

and well, there's not much else is there. you can see they do actually have some rubber baby buggy bumpers and down there, any vibration on the uh, stepper motor? Nice touch. Nothing you can't fix with a Dremel. Of course it's got shielding on the bottom.

Bloody Murphy. might as well go all the way There you go, Bob's your uncle. These point probes fit in there very nicely actually, so I'm able to probe that out. Yeah, probably could have used one of those and you know, held it there with my tongue at the right angle to try and, uh, get it working or botched it some other way.

But uh, the dremel takes like 10 seconds. Look at that. it's like a bought one. If it works, I can bog it up with some, um, hot snot or something like that.

But uh yeah, that's good enough. for Australia. that'll let us power it up and I can still use the original adapter. All right, let's power it up.

Got an external supply here? One of the annoying things about this is that I went to, uh, plug it in Channel One because I know you know this is my regular use one. Um, and it only gave me six volts out because you gotta read the bloody name plate up there. I wish they had the label actually down here. Um, but as it turns out, this is only a 30 volt one amp jobby anyway.

So anyway, I've set the power supply to one amp so its rating is 1.3 but uh. one. I don't think like it won't draw. I don't think it'll draw 1.3 So one amp should be good enough.

so I'll switch that on. And uh, sure enough, there you go. 100 milliwatt standby. Switch it on.

Green Green is good. There's no error. Led didn't do anything. I don't know.

what does that do? No idea. I guess why I have to plug it into the Usb. I expected like it to go V-vip or something. Oh, I heard the windows blurp, sorry, um, there you go, it's seeking.

I hear it seeking. Three watts, Seven watts, something like that. Yeah, that's what I'd expect. green flush, flash and then it reset.

I think it's good to go. be interesting to see how much power it takes when it actually scans. Oh, I just realized I've been using my microphone back to front. sorry if the audio sounds in this.

Damn, let me switch it, idiot professional video blogger. There we go. Yeah, it's pointing backwards now. All right.

So let's just see if it scans something. I have installed the drivers. I haven't opened the software yet though, so I have no idea. But let's whack in a test page, shall we? which I printed out on my color dumpster printer.

Thank you very much. Let's just go to Pdf and see if it does anything by default. All right, not email scan. Not.

We've got it set up presumably or it doesn't work. Okay, I've got the app running Windows 10. I'm going to, uh, press scan scanning page one. It says, oh, it's flashing.

There it goes. Know it's trying to suck it in. Oh geez, it's not quick is it? I set it for uh, 600 dpi because that's all it can do in the document feeder. but it's it's doing something.

There it goes. So I'll post up the image right about now and I'll tell you if it's a win and win a chicken dinner I think it would be. Is it there? I can't see why not. Oh, you can see sort of something up in the top left corner there which is not on the print out here you can see like some colory stuff happening up here.

Maybe that was just, you know, Maybe just needs that. the rollers need to clean or something. didn't roll properly and something like that. Let me do a flatbed.

Yep, that one's absolutely perfect. So there's just a little bit something off with the uh sheet feeder. So yeah, maybe it needs a bit of lube. Everything's better with lube.

Okay, let's scan a Pcb, shall we? I'll put scan the bottom of a raspberry pi. Actually, it's probably better if you put a white page on the back, even if that thing lifts up. Um, yeah, we'll just cover it like that. Well, there she goes.

I set it to 1200 dpi now so it's going really slow. I wonder if I can cancel it part of the way through? don't know. but uh yeah, it takes a while. but you know if you're doing like one-off stuff like you know, really high quality photos or you know, like reverse engineer in a Pcb or something like that, you know speed doesn't matter.

So there you have it. check it out. That looks pretty good. That was just, uh, the default settings of the uh of the scan at 1200 dpi.

and even when I crop that from an A4, it gives me like a four thousand forty five hundred? by like four thousand pixel image or something like that. And um, it seems nice and clear. It's really quite nice. So scanners are a reasonable way to, uh, photograph Pcbs? Um, it's better for blank ones.

Of course it's a bit more difficult for, uh, populated ones, but uh, yep, it works fine for this raspberry Pi. Then there's no image tweakings. Of course, you know, if you want to get it just right, you know you're doing some reverse engineering or some product photography or something like that, then yeah, you can tweak it, but that's straight out of the box. That's pretty schmick.

So there you have it. There's a dumpster scanner hack. Um, that works just fine if you have any idea what that pain in the Asa connector um, exactly is. Um, you can actually buy the plug packs on ebay.

They're like, you know, 50 bucks or something though. Unfortunately, I'm not going to spend that. I've got wires hanging out the back. no worries.

Good enough for Australia. and uh, you know, I don't do scanning all that often, but uh, I can hook this up to like, not necessarily power supply. I can just get a 24 volt plug pack i've got my box and then just, uh, you know, splice that in there to the wiring. and uh, Bob's younger.

I got myself a 450 buck current model scanner. Even though it's quite old, it looks like they've been selling this thing for quite a few years. It's um, slow. but it looks like really decent quality.

So anyway, if you like that video, give a big thumbs up. Catch you next time you.