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How to Turn Wired Scanner/Printer into Wireless Ravi Singh How To, Linux No
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Do you have one of those old “All-in-One” or “3-in-1” wired printer cum scanner cum
photocopying machines from brands like Canon, HP, etc.? If yes, you can follow this
guide to turn your USB or LAN wired all-in-one printers into wireless scanning and
printing machines.

In this guide, I am going to show you steps to convert your old 3-in-1 Inkjet
printer of any brand into a completely Wireless Printing and Scanning machine. You
can then use your PC or smartphone to print and scan using your printer wirelessly.

Contents hide
Steps to Turn Your Old Wired Printer to Wireless Scanning and Printing Device
Step 1: Prepare the SD Card
Step 2: Setup Raspberry Pi
Step 3: Install and Setup CUPS
Step 4: Setup AirPrint on raspberry Pi for iOS Devices
Step 5: Install and Setup SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
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STEPS TO TURN YOUR OLD WIRED PRINTER TO WIRELESS SCANNING AND PRINTING DEVICE
One common way to turn a USB wired printer into wireless is by using a WiFi router
with USB support. However, in this guide, we will convert our printer into wireless
printing and scanning device using Raspberry Pi, which is a low-cost, credit-card-
sized computer.

To get started, you need the following,

A Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi 2, 3, or 4 for this project. They all are going
to work fine.
An HDMI Cable to connect Raspberry Pi to monitor or TV display
WiFi or LAN Cable
Power Supply for Raspberry Pi
A Class 10 MicroSD card
A Keyboard
A Mouse
A card reader if you are going to use a PC or Mac and your laptop doesn’t have a SD
card slot
Once you have the stuff you need, follow these steps,

STEP 1: PREPARE THE SD CARD

To prepare your SD card, follow these steps,

Connect your MicrosSD card to your PC or laptop using SD card reader.

Then download Raspberry Pi Imager program and install it.
After the installation, run Raspberry Pi Imager and click Choose OS> Raspberry Pi
OS (32-bit)
choose raspberry pie os 32 bit
Click Choose Storage and select the SD card
choose SD card
Then click Write and wait for it to finish.
install raspberry pi 32 bit OS on SD Card
STEP 2: SETUP RASPBERRY PI
Connect your SD card to your Raspberry Pi and then turn it ON. Wait for it to boot
completely and then connect your keyboard and mouse to the Raspberry Pi.

Close all the open windows and then open a new Terminal window.

open terminal in raspberry pi

TIP: You may also enable SSH for remote management and controlling the Raspberry
Pi.

STEP 3: INSTALL AND SETUP CUPS

We have already created a detailed tutorial on this with a video guide. Refer to
our guide on How to Turn A USB Wired Printer into Wireless WiFi Printer?

After setting up CUPS, you can print from your Android smartphone, Mac, or PC
wirelessly. For iOS devices, you need to set up the AirPrint service.

STEP 4: SETUP AIRPRINT ON RASPBERRY PI FOR IOS DEVICES

To print wirelessly from your iPhone or iPad, you need to set up the AirPrint
service on your Raspberry Pi. The steps are as follow,

In Raspberry Pi, open the Terminal window and execute the following commands. You
may also use SSH to install the AirPrint service.

sudo apt update

sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt full upgrade
After the update/upgrade, install the “Avahi daemon” for AirPrint by running the
following command.

sudo apt install avahi-daemon

The Avahi-daemon package will implement Apple’s Zeroconf architecture, also known
as Bonjour, which is AirPrint uses to connect your printer (Raspberry Pi) to iOS
devices, such as an iPhone or iPad.

Finally, restart the Raspberry Pi using the following command,

sudo reboot
After the restart, you can send print requests from your AirPrint devices, such as
iPhone, to your Raspberry Pi-connected printer.

STEP 5: INSTALL AND SETUP SANE (SCANNER ACCESS NOW EASY)

SANE will enable you to use your USB wired scanner for wireless scanning. For this,
unlike AirPrint and CUPS, there is no built-in utility. Thus, we need to use third-
party open-source client apps that support the SANE protocol.

The steps to set up and use SANE for wireless scanning are as follow,

Open SSH or Terminal window and run the following command to update the package
list and upgrade out-of-date packages.
Sudo apt update
Sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt get update get upgrade
After the update/upgrade process, run the following command to install SANE.
sudo apt install sane
sudo apt install sane
The good thing about SANE is that most scanners work out of the box and do not
require any additional setup. However, some may require you to install additional
drivers, such as HP.

You can install the required drivers by installing a package using the following
command.
sudo apt install hplip
After installing the SANE software on your Raspberry Pi, check if your scanner will
work wirelessly with the software. The steps are as follow,
Turn On your scanner and connect it to the Raspberry Pi. Then check if the scanner
is detected and working using the following command in the terminal window.
sudo sane-find-scanner -q
find wireless scanner printers
If SANE finds your scanner, it will display a message such as,
found USB scanner (vendor=0x04a9 [Canon], product=0x176d [MG2500 series]) at
libusb:001:007
If SANE couldn’t find your printer, no message is displayed. Try restarting and
reconnecting the printer and Raspberry Pi via USB 2.0.
To test if it’s working, run the following commands,
scanimage -L
If the printer is supported by SANE, it will display a message, such as below.
device `pixma:04A91827' is a CANON Canon PIXMA TS3100 Series multi-function
peripheral
If no message is displayed, your scanner is not supported by SANE. Check the SANE
official compatibility documentation for more details.
You can now start scanning documents or images on your printer wirelessly using the
following command.