February 3, 2008

Canon MP210 and MP520 join the party!

UPDATE:

This article is now DEPRECATED.

For any Pixma device, install instead the latest Sane library.

Read the article on this blog here



May look out of topic here ?

Good news anyway for Canon Pixma MP210 and MP520 owners...

They will now be able to use their scanners with Sane frontends like Xsane, Kooka, ... as MP610.

Following some exchanges in this blog and the libsane mailing list, the driver updates made for MP610 appeared to be fully compatible with MP520 (message posted in this Blog by Thomas) and MP210 scanners.

The reason?

Simply, those 3 all-in-one use exactly the same USB protocol, at least for their scanner part.
Remember they were released by Canon at the same time ...

Let's congratulate this Canon's initiative, as a step towards device standardization is a major help for the programmers planet, a single driver working for at least 3 different models ... this is eden world!

Note: this latest driver version does not bring anything new to MP610 (uh ... what else could we bring anyway??)

Installation procedure

The procedure to install the pixma updated libsane driver is the same as for MP610, only the model PID needs to be correctly set in the udev rules for permissions:
  • Download latest 0.14.2u version of the libsane-pixma library, (either full package or patch for libsane-pixma 0.13.1 available) and follow the installation instructions given in this previous post.

  • When setting the permissions rules (see the same post) for MP210 or MP520, adjust the corresponding USB PID:
    • MP210 USB address: 04a9:1721
    • MP520 USB address: 04a9:1724

      This would give udev rules like for instance:
      # Canon PIXMA MP210
      SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1721", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"

      or
      # Canon PIXMA MP520
      SYSFS{idVendor}=="04a9", SYSFS{idProduct}=="1724", MODE="664", GROUP="scanner"

  • Remember, to have udev take into account the rules changes, either unplug the USB cable, wait a few seconds, and plug it back, or issue the following command:
    $ sudo udevcontrol reload_rules

  • You're ready to scan! Select in your frontend (Xsane, Kooka, …) a scan resolution proposed, and start scanning:
    • for MP210: available 75, 150, 300, or 600 dpi
    • for MP520: available 75, 150, 300, 600, 1200, or 2400 dpi

Someone else has got another compatible model ? ;-)