How can I link my Canon MG5650 scanner to Ubuntu?

Question

I have a multi-purpose printer (scanner/printer/copier) Canon MG5650. I can now print wirelessly, how can I add it as a scanner to Ubuntu?

Answer 1

You need nightly version of sane. You can compile it yourself or install it from this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~rolfbensch/+archive/ubuntu/sane-git

You can add this repository and upgrade sane this way (in terminal):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rolfbensch/sane-git
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

You might need to do sudo apt-get install -f to fix some dependency problems.

If you don’t have sane already installed, you can do this after adding this PPA by:

sudo apt-get install xsane sane

I have the same printer/scanner, and after installing nightly sane from this repository, I could easily use the scanner. When connected to the same network that the scanner is connected to, just run xsane (you should be able to find in applications menu) and let it discover your device from network.

You’ll also be able to use other sane-based tools for scanning, like xscanimage, skanlite etc. (even LibreOffice, you can find list of them here: http://www.sane-project.org/sane-frontends.html).

Your all-in-one device should be visible in titlebar of those programs as pixma:MG5600_<ip_address>.

Oh, and most of those tools allow you to scan in 1200 dpi resolution. Don’t use it, the scanner is capable of maximum 600 dpi, anything greater will lead you to scrambled image acquired.