I have an all in one printer/scanner unit that died on me. Actually the whole machine is still working, but printhead is now beyond simple repair and should be replaced. It's an EPSON Stylus Photo RX640.
The problem is that I really liked this machine. It was a superb printer and it also has quite a decent scanner on top.
But since printhead costs about 130€ + 50€ service I don't think it's viable for me to do this. I could replace head myself as it's a fairly trivial process. The problem is that one has to enter printhead serial into printer in order for it to work (a kind of immunosupressive heh).
But before I buy a new printer (likely EPSON EcoTank series for extra low running costs) I'm now thinking that buying a new all-in-one is like buying an all-in-one computer. Monitor will last much longer than computer itself. Here scanner will likely also outlast printer (actually printhead in EPSONs).
The question
Is it even remotely possible to directly attach a scanner to printer without any intermediate computer? Either via network or directly by cable? This would allow one to create an all-in-one combo of their liking.
33 Answers
It is "remotely" possible, if the printer has a USB hub built in so that it can pass through devices to your computer. Yes they will be connected together but they will not act as a single device, you will have to install drivers and software for both devices for them to work. You will also loose any simple "copy" functionality that the all-in-one device has.
Most of the mutifunction devices actually act this way to begin with, the thing that "binds" the devices together is the actual software that is supplied by the manufacturer, both onboard the device and in the computer. As far as the computer is concerned they usually are separate devices and when the computer tries to "copy" something then it will scan it and then print it rather than use some mysterious built in function.
A printer is a completely dumb device, as is a scanner. Neither of them need any of the processing power or bandwidth that a device like a router has. Sure they can run an IP stack so they have a webpage and work on a network and have USB support, but that functionality is available on the smallest of microcontrollers these days and doesn't even need a "full featured" OS like Linux. Chances are it is something along the lines of FreeRTOS or an in-house equivalent.
The scan button on an all-in-one printer though will be a built in routine that simply runs the scan routine and rather than send data to the computer will then pump it back out to the printer function. Because the microcontroller knows the formats expected by the scanner and printer it can do the conversion without having to understand the finer intricacies of several hundred subtly different types of USB scanner (with or without document feeder) which would need a more powerful controller and a full operating system.
What that means is that printers don't support scanners because generally they don't need to until they have one built in and vice versa.
This is generally motivated by cost. Full SoCs that can run Linux used to cost anywhere from $10 each and going up, though they have been getting cheaper, a simple microcontroller that is simply capable of doing the job of feeding some already formatted data from a windows print driver over usb to a print head or copying data off of a scanner in the opposite direction could be less than $1 each for production quantities. It might be that one day we get devices that can all support each other happily but it is still always going to be cheaper to go for "good enough" rather than "good for everything".
I'm in the same situation. HP AIO printhead assploded, and I bought a cheap and superior in every way laser printer instead.
So far the options I see are:
- iCopy a Windows program that forwards scans to a printer.
- Scan to email + Print incoming emails. A synergy of common features, and the printer's email account as a backup of everything copied may come in handy someday.
- Writing my own script that watches directories on a NAS and prints new files. Can set up multiple shares on the scanner appliance, so different settings (eg duplex or front only printing) can be picked by choosing which share to scan to. The scans can be retained locally or deleted after sending to print. Basically similar to #3 but works without internet and allows setting up multiple destinations.
I can suggest that you should use a raspberry pi zero and install windows lot on it. Then you just hsve to install icopy on it and set it as startup program. Now connect an otg to usb hub and connrct it to the raspberry. The last step is to connect your printer and scanner and install their drivers. Once all done first turn on your scanner and printer and then power the raspberry. Icopy will automatically start and you can copy anything.
