Tuesday 28 January 2014

xcanex Reborn with New Software Upgrade!


We are proud to announce the launch of our latest software update for your xcanex Scan Station.
If you haven't already done so, you can download it here!

Perfecapture 2.1.0.7 addresses several issues
•Users no longer need to physically flatten book pages – the new FLATPAGE Technology will do it perfectly. Watch the introduction video here.
•The latest version of FLATPAGE doesn’t require alignment of the book gutter to the center line – just casually place the book and flip on
•Dual-page mode allows scanning of both pages of a book simultaneously. Get 100 pages scanned within 12 minutes!
•Page detection and cropping is now much more robust than ever before
•Improved page background whitening and shadow/bleed-through removal
•Increased dynamic range for photo scanning with more natural colors
Important Bug Fixes
•Resolved numerous software crash issues
•Eliminated program hung-up when used with some PC’s USB 3.0 ports (marked “SS”), e.g. Intel’s USB 3.0 eXtensible Host controller for Windows 8

DOWNLOAD NOW and refresh your experience with xcanex

Launch of piQx Imaging Forum, revamp of Weblog
- Speak Your Heart Out, Hear From Others


It is time to communicate! Our brand new community forum aims to tie xcanex creators with xcanex owners from around the world. 
Particularly since the xcanex is such a revolutionary, new-concept, full-featured product, we hope that this avenue will help fulfill our mission to bring the joy of scanning to those who find conventional scanning solutions unsatisfactory, by providing a centralized platform for our users to post questions or find solutions to frequently-asked-questions.

For example, did you know you that you can insert new scans in between 2 processed images? How about maximizing the sharpness of your scans? Or scan directly to cloud to be accessed by your phone/tablet instantly without even having to save to a file? 

Now you will be able to learn all this, and more! 


Coupled with our weblog (which you are now reading), we hope to bring out the various features and uses of the xcanex through fortnightly posts.


Delay no further, get feedback, share your experiences, or even your scansConnect with us now!

So what actually happened from Perfecapture V2.000 to V2.107?

In short, a lot.
FlatPage, our page-curve correction feature in PerfecaptureTM basically underwent a major overhaul since being launched in Oct 2013. Now, it no longer requires the book gutter to be aligned to a center line – gutter position and book skews are automatically detected and you can place books (of page size A5 and smaller) anywhere on the xcanpad so long as the camera is able to see the whole book. We figured that it would be a big plus to let users flip pages without having to worry about repeatedly aligning the gutter. Curve correction is now more precise for texts printed near the gutter. Page Detection and Cropping reliability have improved tremendously, and so has Finger Image Removal – now you will hardly need to use the manual cropping or finger image removal features. Page Background Whitening (shadow + bleed-through removal) is now more robust to deep shadows caused by very curved pages. Refinement was done to post-scan text enhancements, and you now get better dynamic range when scanning photographs.

On to the bugs. To tell the truth, the first software released with FlatPage was quite buggy. In fact I was responsible for one of them – while initially implementing book curve correction, a split second memory loss left a variable corrupted and this was used within the super-important perspective correction codes (yup, you can imagine I went nuts when I got to know about it). So if you are the curious type and still have the early V2.000 version of software, you can try tilting the camera way up to gloss mode and place a photo or receipt skewed maximally around 45 degrees (to create heavy perspective error). The scan should turn out so distorted you might have been looking through the eyes of a drunk person.

If you happen to be a software developer, you might empathize with us a little more. You would know certain bugs don’t just show up in the labs, they reveal themselves during demos to your customers or when your backs are turned. Here is an example: V2.000 had some bugs which caused crashes (when you see “PerfeCapture has stopped working”, that means it has crashed) and we worked hard to fix them. We put the software through rigorous tests, scanned thousands of times on different PCs and different versions of Windows OS-es, with hundreds of different combinations and sequences. We were determined not to let another crash occur. By the time V2.105 was released, we were pretty confident we had solved them all, but oh boy we were wrong.


A few days later a user wrote to us and said “The software crashes a lot”.  A lot? The only logical explanation was that he hadn’t updated to V2.105, I informed him. “I just did. Still crashes a lot” was his reply. What was going on? We had to delve deeper. The reports of any software crashes ate at me and I was determined to get to the bottom of the problem. Examining and re-examining our lab evaluation procedures, we finally narrowed down to one possibility – we had limited evaluation PCs with USB 3.0 ports (marked with an “SS” symbol). Although xcanex worked flawlessly on those USB 3.0 ports that we had, their USB chipsets and drivers were all from Fresco Logic. We learned that most new Windows 8 PCs were subsequently installed with Intel’s USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller. Believing this to be the cause, we procured a new test PC and true enough, a crash occurred by the 5th scan! Logically, it should not have posed a problem because USB 3.0 hosts are supposed to be backward compatible with USB 2.0 devices. Nevertheless, we were finally able to work around this and V2.107 should no longer crash with USB 3.0 ports driven by the eXtensible Host Controller. This case was not strictly caused by a bug in the codes but it does illustrate how much the team and I put in to V2.107 and for that, try it you must!

Relationships Take Time To Build.
Don’t Let xcanex Be Misunderstood.

We urge you to hear us out and you will be rewarded with a perfect scanning tool that will assist and accompany you for a long time to come. During these past months we have been observing, listening and analyzing the possible bottlenecks that could prevent you from truly enjoying the use of your xcanex. With the launch of our new blog and forum we will be providing you with useful information, tips and tricks that will help you to maximize the potential of your xcanex. Time to get those stunning results and scan to your heart’s desire. It really IS quite simple.

Some mentioned topics include:







Thursday 23 January 2014

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to piQx Imaging's new weblog.
An avenue for current (and future) xcanex users to keep up-to-date on our latest updates, useful scanning and IT tips as well as new product / software launches.
All this would not have been possible without you, our first users, who have given us the confidence and encouragement to continue on this journey to bring to you a revolutionary scan station that we hope will one day change the face of scanning as we know it. 
As we continue to work toward delivering an even better product and user experience, we hope that this site will be a beneficial source of information to all our followers.

As always, happy scanning!


The piQx Team