This week’s question is about an old 3D scanner, the Eora.
Reader Leo asks:
“Some years ago I purchased an Eora 3D scanner for use with my iPhone. For a while it worked well, but with a change of phone it ceased to work. The app crashed and is no longer available in the App Store. I saw you wrote about this scanner and therefore I was wondering whether you know a source to revive the scanner. Is there an alternative app I could use?”
The Eora 3D scanner was a gadget launched on Kickstarter back in 2015, which is now incredibly ten years ago. The device was essentially a green laser projector and mount for your smartphone.
As you can see at the top, the subject would be rotated on a turntable, while a green laser projects a line onto the subject. The smartphone runs the Eora app that observes the twists and turns of the laser line to identify the geometry. Software algorithms then transform the collected data into a proper 3D scan for export.
The Eora 3D Scanner was an interesting concept: a low-cost approach for tabletop 3D scanning, and perhaps the only one that involved a laser. Their lowest price on Kickstarter was only US$199, but the regular price was to be something over US$300.
The device itself is pretty straightforward: a laser line projector and a turntable. The key to the entire system is really the smartphone app that does all the hard work.
As Leo wrote, the app is no longer in the App Store, and the company’s website seems to have been transformed into a suspicious site that provides information about lottery numbers in Macau for Indonesians — definitely nothing to do with 3D scanning.
What can you do? Not much.
There is one option: It might be possible to download the app if you go to your Purchase History on the App Store and see if you can download it from there. However, if the app is not technically OS-compatible anymore (likely), then you are out of luck.
Even if you are able to re-download it from Purchase History and get it going, it may require a server connection for some purpose. That server is likely long dead.
As far as I know, there would be no third-party apps that would replace the Eora 3D technology.
If one were very ambitious, it might be possible to rewrite a semblance of the original app from scratch by taking apart the device and determining how it operates. That’s quite a stretch, and few would be able to do all that.
The far, far easier approach is to simply buy a new 3D scanner. There are quite a few very good options now on the market, as there has been significant competition on the market. This could be one of the reasons Eora 3D disappeared: better options appeared.
One that I’ve been using is the 3DMakerPro Seal Lite. This device, currently listed at US$359, can produce very good 3D scans with little effort. Its capabilities go well beyond the Eora 3D tabletop system. There are plenty of similarly priced options from other companies.
Equipment does not last forever, and this is one case of that happening. Ten years is a very, very long time in the 3D scanning world, and it’s time to move on.
