Our products and accessories are available through this website’s Shop page and on Amazon.com.
Enter Flip-Pal in the Amazon search field. Accessories such as the protective carrying cases are sold on both sites, although special discount coupons will only work on our site.

Unfortunately, the Flip-Pal is not yet available outside of the U.S. and Canada. We are only licensed to sell it in North America, and do not have distribution and support channels set up elsewhere. We do hope to be able to sell it worldwide some day, but for now we are concentrating on success in the U.S. first. When we expand, it will most likely be to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Our Flip-Pal mobile scanner was designed by the team here in Northern Colorado, U.S.A., and is manufactured for us by a premier international company based in Taiwan. This is similar to many consumer electronics companies, including Apple. Our carry cases are made for us by U.S. manufacturers, and our supply chain and customer support are also U.S. based. We are proud of our contribution to the American economy and how we have grown from a lean beginning just two years ago. The Flip-Pal mobile scanner is an American innovation creating American jobs. You can learn more at www.flip-pal.com/press-room and www.flip-pal.com/about-us
– Gordon Nuttall, CEO

We have programs for independent re-sellers and affiliates. Review our Affiliate Program here: http://flip-pal-affiliates.com. Select the Reseller link in the left sidebar to enroll in our resellers program. Distributors can also use that link and we will keep you informed about other programs as they become available.

We are constantly trying to improve our offerings and do have plans to offer additional products in the future. We would be interested to know your specific needs and thoughts of improvement so that we might consider incorporating those in future offerings. For instance, what size of mobile scanner are you interested in and why? Please give us your feedback through our Contact Us form and visit our website often to learn about new product announcements.

The basic scanning functions of the Flip-Pal are completed quickly and without use of a computer at all, and in general, you do not need to be an accomplished computer user. But you do need a basic understanding of how to use your computer’s operating system, and how to access the temporary drive that is created when you put the SD memory card into your PC or Mac. You also need to know how to navigate and view the files and folders on the card as well as your computer’s hard drive.

Stitching multiple scans together is a little more complicated, but is not especially difficult and once mastered becomes second nature. The User’s Guide, our Tutorial Videos and these Frequently Asked Questions describe the process very well.

Absolutely. Mac users can use the Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner to scan photos, then transfer the resulting JPEG images to their computers just as they would with a digital camera.

You will find a Mac-specific help section in these Frequently Asked Questions, below.

Our EasyStitch software for Mac OS X will assemble multiple scans into one. If it did not come with your Flip-Pal – preloaded on the SD memory card – it is available on our website to Flip-Pal mobile scanner owners in the Customer Care section under Downloads.

Our EasyStitch software was designed to stitch images of the type and size produced only from the Flip-Pal scanner, and it will do so properly in most cases. We cannot provide technical support for stitching images from other sources, such as those from a digital camera or a different scanner, nor do we warrant that it will work correctly using scans from any other device.

The software is on the SD card, and the actual stitching is done after you plug the card into your computer; the computer assists. It is also possible to copy the Flip-Pal™ Toolbox software program to your hard drive and use it there without the SD card.

Yes. News of updates will be posted on this web site and are available on the Downloads tab under the Customer Care section. Registered customers who provided an email address will be notified.

The Flip-Pal is not designed to scan negatives or slides, which would require a separate light source in the lid, increasing costs and complexity. A dedicated film scanner is by far the best solution for film, but models that produce quality results tend to be fairly expensive.

Local photo processing outlets often have good scanners for this purpose, and there many online companies that can do a great job at a remarkably competitive cost.

Yes. The display screen is the 1.7-inch color LCD display screen on the product itself and not an external display screen. The LCD shows the image as the the scan bar is moving. You can also watch the scan being performed by using the patented flip-and-scan technology: remove the lid, place the scanner on the original and watch the scan in progress through the see-through window.

We designed the Flip-Pal with a minimum lifespan of 10,000 scans. In testing, each unit in our sample went to 100,000 scans (or 10 times our specification) with no failures or reduction in function.

The Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner has been built to high standards and will withstand the normal wear and tear that a mobile device may be subjected to. Here are some precautions you can take to ensure that your Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner is always working at peak performance:

• Keep the glass scanning surface free of smudges, dust or other debris.
• Clean using a mild cleaner applied to a soft cloth.
• Do not spray or pour liquids on the scanner or scanning surface.
• Avoid physical shock.
• Avoid electrostatic shock.
• Use or store in dust-free environments.
• Avoid exposing to temperature extremes, such as in direct sunlight or inside a closed car.
• When not in use for long periods of time, remove the batteries.

More detail on some of these items can be found on the Technical Specs tab of the About Flip-Pal page.

Window protector sheets are not required, but are available to provide additional protection for the plastic viewing window on the bottom of the scanner. Please apply ONLY to the bottom viewing window, NOT to the top glass under the removable lid. Packets of replacement window protector sheets are available from the Shop page.

You can download all Flip-Pal™ documentation in PDF format from the Downloads page. The User’s Guide and Quick Start Guide were updated along with a new version of our software on Nov. 1, 2011.

The battery indicator icon on the screen is black when the batteries are full and shows white sections as they discharge. The newest versions of the scanner show the battery icon in green.

There are common situations that might trigger a low battery warning.
1 – Make sure you turn the scanner power OFF before removing the SD memory card for any reason. If you leave it on when you eject the card, the scanner will not go into battery saving mode and your batteries could be exhausted before you have gotten the number of scans they are rated for.
2 – When turning the scanner off, you only need to hold the power button in the forward position for about one second. If you leave it pushed forward for a much longer time – six or eight seconds or more – you may get a *false* low battery warning.
3 – Make sure to set the date and time in the scanner settings when you put it into service, AND whenever you replace the batteries. Not doing so can lead to a *false* low battery warning screen.
4 – Make sure you replace all four alkaline batteries at the same time. Do not mix battery types, brands, or old and new batteries. Make sure that all batteries are fresh, come from the same package from the same manufacturer, and have the same expiration date.

Our tests show that you should be able to get at least 150 scans from a set of quality alkaline batteries. We strongly recommend only alkaline, photo lithium and rechargeables (see next question). The so-called “heavy duty” batteries do not perform as well or as long as alkalines and should be avoided.

You should not mix battery types, brands, or old and new batteries. Make sure that all batteries are fresh, come from the same package from the same manufacturer, and have the same expiration date.

Absolutely. If you have many photos to scan and battery consumption might become an issue, rechargeable batteries are an excellent and cost-effective solution. We advise the use of quality nickel-metal hydride rechargeables (abbreviated NiMH). Several sets of batteries and a charger will allow you to make thousands of scans without requiring the purchase of new batteries. Note that NiMH batteries typically lose their charge over several months when not in use, so it may be necessary to make sure they are fully charged before use.

There is a new generation of rechargeable NiMH batteries from the major manufacturers – Duracell, Energizer and Sanyo. Duracell calls them “Precharged,” Energizer calls them “Recharge,” and Sanyo calls theirs the “Eneloop.” Sanyo invented the improved technology.

These are reportedly quite superior to the older NiMH rechargeables, allowing more scans per charge, and many hundreds of recharge cycles. Sanyo says their Eneloops can be recharged “up to 1,500 times.” In addition, these batteries do not lose their charge quickly and will still be ready for use for six to nine months or more, even if your scanner is stored and not in use. Their price is comparable to conventional NiMH batteries.

No. One of the unique features of our mobile scanner is that you do not need to be plugged in to use it. The Flip-Pal mobile scanner is designed to be very power efficient and uses the available-everywhere AA battery. Please read the FAQ above that discusses the use of rechargeable batteries as an excellent solution to battery consumption concerns.

To remove the SD memory card, first push it IN just slightly. That will release the catch with an audible click. You should then be able to remove it easily. When you put it back in, you will feel it click into place.

You should always power your scanner down completely BEFORE removing the SD card. Failure to do so might result in a rapid drain of the batteries. Please review the FAQ above titled “Sometimes I get a low battery warning when I’m sure the batteries are good.”

Yes! Important! ALWAYS use the ‘Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media’ icon in the system tray (Windows), or eject the card or drag it to the trash (Mac). If you remove the card without ejecting it properly, ALL data on the card can be corrupted and lost.

In some cases, the operating system may notify you that there are problems with files on the card. To repair, you may need to reformat the card with a reformat utility. Warning! This will delete all information on the card so be sure you have a backup of your scans. After reformatting, you can download the Toolbox and EasyStitch software and reinstall them on the card, and copy your scans back to the DCIM > 100_SCAN folder.

Any standard SD card is compatible with the Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner and it’s a good idea to have a spare. You can purchase them at office supply or electronics stores. You can also reinstall the software that came on your original SD card to a new one after downloading it from our website. It’s in the Customer Care section under the Downloads tab.

You can certainly use other SD cards, and we have successfully tested models as large as 32 GB in size. Click here for the About Flip-Pal section, then select the Technical Specs tab to the right and read the Supported SD cards section.

Since the scanner cannot erase files on the SD card, the write protect (WP) switch setting is ignored. If the SD card is plugged directly to a computer, the computer should honor the card’s WP setting. The WP switch is also ignored if it’s plugged into the computer using the provided SD card-USB adapter.

EasyStitch and the Toolbox take up only about 11 MB out of the total 2 GB of space on the memory card (less than 1%). The software stays on the SD card and does need to be installed on your computer. Keeping it on the SD card ensures you have it with you when you travel and want to use it on someone else’s computer. However, you can also copy it to your computer and run it from there.

We do Not advise using an SD slot in a device other than your laptop or desktop computer. The card may not be detected properly or allow you to access the files or folders of the software pre-installed on the card.

Most of these suggestions apply to both Windows and Mac computers, and it almost always a computer problem. Although it is unlikely that either the SD memory card or the USB adapter is defective, you might try swapping either one with a known good device.

Otherwise:
(1) Remove the SD card from the adapter and reinsert it making sure it travels firmly to the bottom of the slot. It can only be inserted one way.
(2) Try putting the adapter into a different and previously unused USB slot in your computer.
(3) Power your computer down completely, put the SD card and adapter into any available USB slot, and turn computer back on.
(4) Your computer’s internal USB circuitry could have a conflict between an existing USB device (printer, webcam, etc.) and your Flip-Pal SD card. Try unplugging any existing USB device and swap the Flip-Pal SD card into that slot. Then put the existing device into a different slot.

When you plug our memory card into a Mac, after a short delay it will appear on the desktop as an icon called No Name. Double-click to open it and view the files inside. Open the Mac folder and you will see the EasyStitch program icon, the User’s Guide and a link to our web site. Double-click on EasyStitch to run the program. (You may ignore all the other files as they are only for Windows machines.)

If you do not have a Mac folder on your SD card, you need to download and install a newer copy of our software that includes the Mac version. It’s in the Customer Care section, Downloads tab.

Your machine is probably using the built in “Preview” program to view the PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files the documents are created in. Unfortunately, although PDF files are a global standard, Preview does an extremely poor job of displaying them. The best option is to download Acrobat Reader for the Mac from the Adobe web site http://www.adobe.com/downloads/ and set it as the default viewer for all PDF files.

If iPhoto launches when you plug the SD card into your computer, we strongly recommend that you close iPhoto immediately and not allow it to interfere with EasyStitch or other Flip-Pal operations !!

When you plug the SD memory card into your Mac, iPhoto may automatically open and display the scans on the card. If iPhoto is displaying your scans, it will likely give you the option to Import all, or Import selected.

If you import the scans to your hard drive, you should then get the option to Delete Photos or Keep Photos on the camera. You should choose Keep Them On The Camera (the SD card in this case) so they won’t be deleted from the card.

If you cannot find scanned images after opening them in iPhoto, it’s likely that iPhoto has deleted your scans from the SD card.

This is especially problematic if you plan to stitch a series of scans together. When you launch our EasyStitch stitching software, it always looks for the scans on the card in the DCIM > 100_SCAN folder. If it does not find them, you will have to navigate to wherever iPhoto saved them, select them and then try to stitch. This may be extremely difficult as iPhoto saves all images in a hard-to-find folder structure.

NOTE! There have been reports that EasyStitch sometimes does not work properly on images that were opened first in iPhoto.

After you have stitched an image together successfully, you may then import it into iPhoto if you wish to save and organize your work there.

Go to your Applications folder and open a program called Image Capture. Open Preferences from the Image Capture menu in the menu bar. You’ll see a dialog where you can change what happens when you plug in a scanner or camera.

Yes. You must first press and hold down the Command (or Apple) key, then click on the files one at a time to select them. You can also select a contiguous group of files just like on a PC, by selecting the first of a series, holding the Shift key down, then clicking on the last scan you want to select from the group. They will now all be highlighted and you can drag and drop them to the new location.

If you only have a single button mouse, you may accomplish the same operation by holding down the Control key first, then clicking the mouse button.

The scanner works best when the subject is placed directly on the surface of the glass platen with the lid closed. A scanned image degrades in proportion to the increase in distance from the surface.

If you are scanning a photo directly under glass of a “normal” thickness, perhaps one-quarter inch or less, the scan should be acceptable. If that distance is increased by a frame or several mats the blur will increase. In some cases, you may have to remove your subject from the frame to optimize the quality.

Make sure you do not move the scanner at all during the scanning operation.

Although stitching performance is usually excellent, especially with photos, EasyStitch (and competing software from other companies) does have limitations on what it can do. However we have made significant improvements to the way that EasyStitch handles more difficult originals. Please make sure that the software on your SD card contains the latest version (posted October 24, 2011). It is available on the Downloads tab of the Customer Care section of our web site (Toolbox version 1.0.4, and EasyStitch version 1.14).

If you are not getting good results:

1-It’s possible that you don’t have enough overlap in each of your scans for the EasyStitch software to determine how to reassemble it. Be sure to use the scribed lines about one-half inch away from the edges of the bottom viewing window as described in the User’s Guide. Subjects with large amounts of blank space or without distinguishable features may require even more overlap.

2-Some subjects, especially documents with borders or other subjects with repeating patterns present especially difficult problems for stitching software. If your results resemble a hand of playing cards or appear to have been reassembled in a random pattern, this is because the software saw features that seemed to match even though they were from different parts of the original.

You may get improved results by:
• eliminating repeating borders from the scanned area
• increasing the overlap

In order to deal with memory limitations, EasyStitch limits the maximum number of pixels in a single stitch result.

Originals requiring 2-4 scans may be scanned at 600 DPI and EasyStitch will retain the 600 DPI resolution. With 5 to 6 originals, the output resolution will be 400 DPI. For 7 to 8 originals, the output will be 300 DPI.

When scanning at 300 DPI, EasyStitch will retain the 300 DPI resolution for stitches with up to 16 scans.

For originals requiring more than 16 scans, the resulting stitched image will be less than 300 DPI, and the higher the number of scans, the lower the resolution of the stitched result.

1-Make sure you do not move your Flip-Pal at all during a scanning operation. It is much like a camera in this respect and any movement will result in a blurry scan.

2-If you are have ‘flipped’ the scanner on top of an original and are looking through the bottom viewing window, be sure to minimize stray light from other sources, especially from overhead. Too much light can degrade the quality of the scan. You might have to cover the viewing window during the scan with cloth or cardboard for best results.

3-Keep the glass scanning surface clean and free of smudges and dust.

4-If you are viewing the result in image editing software, make sure the screen image size is set at 100 percent for the most accurate visual representation of the final product.

“When I try to stitch my scans EasyStitch fails and tells me that I am out of memory. I have erased nearly every image on my SD card but this did not help.”

First, there is a difference between “memory” and “storage” on a computer.

Memory refers to the amount of RAM (Random Access Memory) that is installed in your computer that is constantly in use by various programs. But the amount of space on your SD card, or on your computer’s hard drive, is considered storage. So deleting images from your SD card will not have any effect on memory usage.

To fix, first update your stitching software. The older version was more susceptible to this problem and the newest one is much improved. You can find it on our web site under the Downloads tab in the Customer Care section, http://flip-pal.com/customer-care/.

You may also be trying to stitch together a very large number of scans that is beyond the capability of the EasyStitch software to assemble.

By default, the Flip-Pal saves all scans to the SD memory card in a folder called 100_SCAN. This is a sub-folder of the DCIM folder. So, if you open the SD card on your computer, images are in DCIM > 100_SCAN. The EasyStitch stitching software always looks in the 100_SCAN folder for images to stitch, unless you direct it to another location.

If you open the temporary drive assigned to your memory card, you will see three or four program folders, one named DCIM. By default, all scans are stored in the DCIM folder. (More accurately, to the 100_SCAN sub-folder inside it.)

Double-click on DCIM to open it, then double-click on the 100_SCAN folder to see the .JPG files inside. Select or highlight the images you wish to delete and press the delete key on your keyboard. They will be moved to the Recycle Bin and cleared from the card.

An alternate method on a Windows PC is to open the Toolbox and click the Browse Scans button at the upper left. A window will open to the 100_SCAN sub-folder, where you may view and manage the scans inside as just described.

The Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner uses a low loss (maximum quality) JPEG format. JPEG is the most common file format and is used by most digital cameras.

Some photo archivers choose to work with the TIF format because it is a ‘lossless’ file format versus JPG which is a ‘lossy’ file format. This means that each time you edit and resave a JPEG file it will degrade slightly in image quality; this does not happen with TIF.

However, perceptual studies have shown that people cannot see the difference between a non-edited low-loss JPEG file and a TIF file until zoomed/enlarged by 6x. You can use image editing software to save the scanned JPG file to a .TIF file. However, if you are not doing repetitive saves, then there is little advantage to converting to TIF.

Long term storage is a concern to anyone dealing with scans that might be the only available copy of a lost or unavailable original. Options include an external USB hard drive, or archiving to a CD or DVD. An online backup service may also be a solution. Backup services include iDrive, Adobe, SOS, Mozy and Carbonite. Multiple types of backups are highly recommended, including storage of a backup disk away from your primary residence.

Visit The Best Solution section on the About Flip-Pal page to see how the Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner offers better solutions than traditional methods for sharing your memories with family and friends.

If your SD card contains many scans, it can take a while for the scanner to calculate the unused space and determine the number of pictures you can still store. You may want to copy some of these scans to your computer’s hard drive and delete them from the SD card.

Internet Explorer will sometime produce an “unknown format or damaged file” message when downloading large files. It may help to clear out your temporary internet cache. To do this, go to the Tools menu and click on Internet Options, check Temporary Internet files, then click on Delete. If this does not resolve the problem, consider using a different browser such as Firefox, Opera, or Safari since IE is the only one with this problem.