Brother ADS-1000W Document Scanner

This post may be of interest for people who have the Brother ADS-1000W Document Scanner on Linux Mint 17. I am specifically using LM17.2 Rafaela, 64-bit version. This may also be relevant to people using certain other Brother Wireless products which I have not tested.

This is a nice little document scanner, and seems to work fairly well in Mint 17.2, after a somewhat pain-in-the-butt setup process, which is not necessarily very intuitive. I am writing down some notes here to save the next person a lot of time spent on trial-and-error. These instructions supplement - and don't replace - the instructions on Brother's website.

Before we get started, I like to use gscan2pdf (available in the software manager). In order to use it effectively, you may wish to install the following packages: unpaper, djvulibre-bin, gocr, although these packages are not required.

Please let me know if these instructions work for you!

 I go through the following in three different sections:

• Basic installation
• Network setup
• Changing scanner settings via the network

Basic installation:

1. To install the scanner, the first thing to do is visit Brother's website (http://support.brother.com). Navigate to the Downloads, find your device (under Document Scanners). I have the ADS-1 series.
2. Select "Linux" for your operating system
3. If you are running LM17, then you will want the "deb" file. Hit "search". I selected the 64-bit, but it will depend on your setup.
4. Read and understand the "Notes before downloading" section
5. Agree and download the file.
6. Follow the directions on the website (use dpkg in the command line).
7. Connect with printer USB cable and test with a scan program such as gscan2pdf. It may fail, because you may need superuser privileges. If it succeeds, proceed to step 9. You may wish to reboot the computer first.
8. To use the scanner as a "normal" (not "super") user, you can follow the instructions linked in step number 5 of the Brother webpage instructions. I personally followed the instructions for "Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, 10.10, 11.4, 11.10, 12.04, 12.10" and rebooted, but this may not be necessary.
9. Your scanner should be working.

 But we can do better. If you have a compatible wireless router, you can pair the scanner with the router, and use it without the USB cable. This will also allow you to easily adjust the settings (get rid of that obnoxious beeping noise, for example).

Network installation:

1. Download the quick setup guide. Follow the instructions on page 11. Note: in my experience, it will not pair with a hidden network. You may have to unhide your network, and then rehide it once it is paired.
2. Find your scanner on the network. If you don't know how to do this, the following command in the terminal may help.
• sudo nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24|grep BRW
• This will return something like:
1. Nmap scan report for BRWA1238798AJA.Networkname (192.168.1.105) 
3. Note the IP address in parentheses (192.168.1.105). This will be important in the next step.
4. To configure your scanner, you use the brsaneconfig4 feature.
1. To add the network scanner, you can type something like this (note: do not use spaces in the name):
• brsaneconfig4 -a name="WhateverNameYouWant" model=ADS-1000W ip=192.168.1.105
• Obviously, you have to replace the 192.168.1.105 with the IP address that you found in your Nmap scan report.
2. To remove the scanner from your computer
• brsaneconfig4 -r name="WhateverNameYouWant"
3. To see other options, you can use brsaneconfig4 -h
4. To list all wireless brother scanner devices on your computer, simply use brsaneconfig4 -q and scroll to the bottom of the list.

To change scanner settings on network scanner:
 Simply take the scanner IP address (use brsaneconfig4 -q or the nmap command in step two of the network installation section) and put it in your web browser. You will see all manner of options there, including a way to turn off that obnoxious beeping noise.

Canon PIXMA MG2555 or MG2550 - making the scanner function work

First of all, have a very happy New Year's!

While I am completely content with my Brother HL2240D printer, and it still works quite well, I have had to additionally install a Canon PIXMA MG2555 (quite similar to the 2550) for unrelated reasons, and I have had one heck of a time getting it to work right on my Linux Mint 17.1 system. I finally figured it out. I write this in the hopes that I can spare you hours of fruitless searching.

Disclaimer: because I have spent so much time messing around with this, it is possible that my printer configuration is different than yours. I don't think it will be an issue, but please be aware that I haven't tested this solution on a fresh install. If it doesn't work for you, that may very well be why.

Basically, using the drivers available on the Canon website (use the 2500 series printer driver and scanner mp Debian Packagearchives), I was easily able to set up my printer to print from Linux. The Scanner function did not work. At all. It was not recognized whatsoever. In order to scan things, I had to boot into Windows, scan my document, and then transfer it over. That was a huge pain, and always felt just a little bit wrong.

It turns out that for me, after hours of messing around with it, the solution is incredibly simple. For some reason, the native scanner application with Linux Mint will not recognize your MG2555. It just won't. What I didn't realize was that the scanner driver comes with its own interface - either I just missed that information, or else nobody made it at all clear. Once you have your printer printing, and your scanner driver installed, all you have to do is run scangearmp (which is what you just installed) in the terminal (you must have your MG2555 plugged into the computer and turned on), and you can scan documents with this program. It's nothing fancy. So far, I haven't found any option to do a multidocument scan, for example, but it's there and it works, finally. You can of course add scangearmp to your menu (right click on menu → configure → open the menu editor → new item, and then put scangearmp in the command box).

Given that your scanner driver is lacking a few essential features, it may be worth your while to check out pdfshuffler as a solution. I just installed it yesterday (so haven't really tested it too much), but it seems quite effective at collating PDF files and allowing you to rearrange the pages. Definitely install it from the official repositories (Menu → Administration → Software Manager), as it is safer and more reliable (don't download it from the link).

Finally, I should say that I do not recommend the PIXMA 2555 for the Linux User. It has reliably handled intermittent light use,  but the ink cartridges are rather expensive (I find), it is incredibly loud, it is very slow, and it does not interface well with Linux Mint.

I would also like to recognize the contributors to this forum who mentioned the key information about the scangearmp command, allowing me to write up this blog entry.