Getting it to see a Dell 1815dn scanner

[Seahorse]

Hope I've got the right forum here. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I have a Dell 1815dn multifunction printer/copier/scanner/fax machine. It's meant to be able to do everything over a network. It's connected to a wireless router; I've installed Dell's OS X printer driver and TWAIN driver on my MacBook Pro.

It prints fine over my home wireless network. But I can't get the computer to see the scanner. Image Capture says "no image capture device connected". In Image Capture, if I click on Devices / Browse devices it just goes into an endless search for devices, but doesn't find anything.

If anyone can shed any light onto how to get this working I'd be hugely grateful.

 

[MisterMe]

....

If anyone can shed any light onto how to get this working I'd be hugely grateful.

If you don't have the driver for networked scanning, then you can't scan over the network. FWIW, I am not aware of anyone who supports scanning over a network on MacOS X.

 

[Shadow]

Why would network scanning be any good anyway? You'd still have to walk over to it and put the thing to be scanned in anyway...

 

[Seahorse]

MisterMe: thanks - at least it's good to know!

ChrisG: it's actually sitting next to my laptop, most of the time. My girlfriend's computer also prints to it, hence having it networked. So I'm just wondering whether I can use it to scan without having to plug in a USB connection every time I want to use it. The other question is why the USB connection doesn't work well for scanning even when it is plugged in. That may just need more fiddling around on my part, though.

 

[bluntrunk]

@Seahorse: You might want to try this perl script by Jon Chambers

http://www.jon.demon.co.uk/dell1600n-net-scan/

 

[Seahorse]

Thanks, bluntrunk. That link doesn't seem to be working right now but I'll try again in a bit.

 

[rjstanford]

Just for grins, since this post shows up in Google pretty highly, here's a fuller set of guidelines:

First, download and install "mac ports" from http://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-1.9.1-10.6-SnowLeopard.dmg

Then run:
sudo port install ghostscript
sudo port install ImageMagick

Download http://www.jon.demon.co.uk/dell1600n-net-scan/dell1600n-net-scan.pl.txt and save it to ~/bin/scanner.pl

Run 'perl ~/bin/scanner.pl --find --1815dn' and note the IP address of your printer (if you didn't already know it). If you have a DNS entry you can use that instead.

Create a new one line shell script (I suggest ~/bin/scanner.sh) as follows:

/usr/bin/perl /Users/USERNAME/bin/scanner.pl --listen PRINTERADDRESS --option pdf --name COMPUTERNAMEHERE --1815dn --scan-dir /Users/USERNAME/Documents/ $*

Replace USERNAME and COMPUTERNAMEHERE with reasonable values.

Then whenever you want to scan something, run scanner.sh and go to the printer:
Scan > Network > COMPUTERNAMEHERE > [checkmark button on PIN screen] > [choose a format] > Start Scanning

That's it The documents will appear in your Documents folder (or wherever you set in your script). You can also run the script like this:

nohup ~/bin/scanner.sh --multi-session >/dev/null 2>&1 &

And have an "always on" scanner daemon.

 

[chantalc]

@rjstanford Is there a way to start this perl script on system start?