Rocketbook Beacons

Introduction

I have a Rocketbook reusable notebook, which I purchased from Amazon it’s my go to notebook when in meetings, learning new things, if I get ideas and every other use possible. It is fantastic as it’s completely reusable and it stores all my notes in the relevant places ready to be sent, stored, printed and manipulated in many various ways.

Requrements

As I have been working off whiteboards lately, I need to be able to scan and store the whiteboard notes, again Rocketbook to the rescue with the help of Rocketbook Beacons. These are little orange silicone triangles, which you place in the corner of your whiteboard to allow Rocketbook to detect the page and scan it.

Solution 1 - Purchase some

I added 2 of these to my Amazon basket ready to be purchased (one for my whiteboard at home and one for when on the road), and then forgot about them until I came to buy a present.

Looking at the basket, at £35.98 for 2 sets of little orange triangles, I wondered what made them so special. Was it the little white lines being millimeter perfect that the software could detect in order to determine the area to scan.

The Amazon basket now had £35.98 (£17.99 each) for little orange triangles, this seemed excessive so I started thinking.

Could I hack it to build some of my own which cost a fraction of the price?

Solution 2 - Creating my own

As it stands it’s not that difficult at all, Rocketbook only looks for 4 orange triangles to denote the corners of the area to be scanned. No special spacing of white lines, no QR Code, no special software to decode anything.

If you don’t believe me, give it a try.

• Draw 4 orange triangles in the following format on a white area to be scanned (it can be a sheet of paper, a whiteboard, anything).

• Open the Rocketbook app on your phone and select New Scan, then select Beacons (platform will vary on how to do this)

I tested this with different colours, and as long as it’s Orange(ish), it seems to work.

Revising the design

So to make them a little more permanent, I cut some orange card and glued a small magnet to the bottom, this is makes them repositionable on the board.

And this works well and it looks a little better.

Improving the design.

I presently don’t own a 3D printer (I know, no need to lecture me on this), so I’m buying one to take the next steps on this so I can print 3D plastic triangles, with magnets on the back.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

28/05 Update

After spotting this little beauty of a 3D printer, I purchased it along with some orange PLA filament. A quick search later and I found some designs for Rocketbook Beacons, simple slice with Orca Slicer and send to printer and in 15 mins I had the following.

Unfortunately I miscalculated the dimensions of my magnets and so had to order some more 10mm diam x 2mm magnets from Amazon.

So it does work and I saved myself the £35.98 by spending:

So I just need to find some other projects to the value of £382.89 to make this one worthwhile.

So back to my original question “Could I hack it to build some of my own which cost a fraction of the price?”

Yes

If you already have a 3D printer and just purchase some orange PLA filament and magnets.

No

If you need to buy a 3D printer, orange filament and magnets, but it’s more fun doing it the way I did it.