Copying documents from electronic displays

A system adapted for automatic optical communication, the system comprising:

• an image capture device for receiving an optical image of a display presenting a document and for generating a digital representation of the optical image, the digital representation including a copy of a housing around the display;
• a sensor for capturing image data of the optical image and for detecting an update of the optical image of the display, wherein the update of the optical image of the display comprises changing from a first page of the document to a second page of the document;
• a change detection module for detecting a change in the optical image based on a difference between a first image and a second image that are captured by the sensor at different times, the change detection module having an input coupled to the sensor and generating a signal indicating the update of the optical image;
• a control module coupled to the change detection module and the image capture device, the control module causing the image capture device to generate the digital representation of the image in response to the update of the optical image of the display;
• a device identification module for identifying a type of portable computing device from the digital representation of the image, the device identification module adapted for communication with the image capture device, the device identification module providing the type of portable computing device;
• and
• an image processing module coupled to the image capture device to receive the digital representation of the image and coupled to the device identification module, the image processing module modifying the digital representation of the image by removing the copy of the housing based on the type of portable computing device and scaling the digital representation of the image.

A method for automatically copying a document from an electronic display, the method comprising:

• setting a primary display to operate in an automatic page changing mode;
• displaying the document on the primary display;
• displaying a machine readable code on a secondary display, the machine readable code identifying a type of a portable computing device;
• determining an orientation of the device;
• activating a sensor based on the orientation of the device;
• detecting, with the sensor, a presence of a light above a predetermined threshold during a first scan of the primary display;
• determining a beginning and an ending of the first scan of the primary display based at least in part on detecting the presence of the light above the predetermined threshold;
• updating the primary display in response to the ending of the first scan of the primary display by changing from a first page of the document to a second page of the document;
• and
• determining whether there is at least one additional undisplayed page of the document and responsive to a presence of the at least one additional undisplayed page, performing the steps of determining the beginning and the ending of a second scan of the primary display and updating for the at least one additional undisplayed page.

A method for automatically outputting information by a multifunction device from an electronic display that presents a document, the method comprising:

• capturing, with a sensor, image data of an optical image of the electronic display;
• detecting with the multifunction device a change in the optical image of the electronic display from a first page of the document to a second page of the document based on a difference between a first image and a second image that are captured by the sensor at different times;
• scanning an image of the electronic display in response to the change in the optical image of the electronic display, the image including a copy of a housing around the electronic display;
• identifying a type of portable computing device from the image of the electronic display;
• modifying the image of the electronic display by removing the copy of the housing based on the type of portable computing device and enlarging a portion of the image corresponding to the display to a size of an output document;
• and
• generating the output document.