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Month: March 2018

Network scanner with ‘sane’

Previously, I had sorted out my home printer to use a RaspberryPI as a print server and so offer shared printing services on my home wi-fi. However, my printer is a Canon MP630 which is a printer and scanner.

I have a need to scan some old photographs but do not want to mess around disconnecting the MP630 from the RPi and reconnecting it to my main computer. I need to turn my RPi into a network printer and scanner controller that can be built as an embedded system using Buildroot.  With this as my main requirement, I ‘googled’ ‘network scanner linux’ software and in the search result was the name ‘saned‘ .

A bit of investigation followed; could sane be easily configured in Buildroot? what supporting files did I need to create?. There is a ‘sane-backends’ directory in the Buildroot ‘package’ directory, so after 30 minutes or so of reading I decided to give it a try. The steps needed were:

  1. enable ‘sane-backends‘ in the root system configuration to be used by Buildroot to create the root file system
  2. create an overlay file saned.conf which determines who can access the network scanner
  3. create a startup file in /etc/init.d called S91scanner which starts/stops/restarts the sane network daemon to automatically start the network daemon at startup.
  4. define the sane network port in a /etc/services overlay file
  5. then tell Buildroot to build me a new root file system.
  6. move the image to a micro-SD card and boot the RPi
  7. On any client system install something like xsane which is a scanner front end.

Amazing, I was able to scan photographs in remotely on the scanner, and then print them from the remote printer/scanner using the RaspberryPi 0W as the print & scan server.

First cycle rides of ’18

It’s been a while since I managed to get out for a good blast on the bike, the weather has been wet and windy but finally winter looks like it is behind us so its time to get the bike out of the shed and get those muscles working again.

Rather than use the Defy I decided to service and get out on the CX, which has the wheels and tyres more suited to wet and muddy roads.

Giant TCX-2 in its younger days

For each of my rides so far this year I have chosen to take the usual route to Hedge End, Lower Upham, Owslebury and home via Bishops Waltham. It’s a round-trip of 35 miles or so and gets me up the tail end of the South Downs with its lovely views and nice quiet small roads. The elevation gain over the ride is around 600 metres, there are a few good and exhausting climbs within the first 20 miles or so.

My latest foray out was a disaster. I had made the simplest schoolboy mistake of:

  • Not eating enough lunch before setting off.
  • Took no food with me
  • Took no money with me.

20 miles of so from home I pretty much ran out of energy but kept going. It was getting cold and the light was fading. Cycling the last few miles along the Botley road I started to have problems with my eyesight, I really couldn’t see properly and was feeling very weak.  I had plenty of water with me, but nothing at all to eat. All I could do to keep going was to try and remember what was in the fridge at home and plan a monumental scoff up as soon as I arrived home.

I’d probably consumed around 150 calories for breakfast. When I arrived home, my Garmin indicated that I had burnt over 1800 calories on the ride. I was absolutely starving, my lack of fuel adversely affected my average speed. I was really angry with myself.

Other than that I was quite pleasant for the first hour or so. I spotted a few Buzzards, a woodpecker and plenty of pheasants.