[sane-devel] Support for UMAX AstraSlim 600

[Ralph Little]

Hi,

On 2021-12-22 9:10 p.m., neel roy wrote:
> Hello Ralph,
>
> Thanks.
>
> > OK, it looks like this machine shares the USB id with Astraslim and 
> the Astraslim 6000
> You mean 600? Anyway, I think that was my try to change conf 
> "/etc/sane.d/artec_eplus48u.conf" (I think).
>
>
> > Unless a developer has access to one of these machines and the will 
> to take it on, supporting it is unlikely in the near future. :(
> Is it not possible I will look at the code and try to figure out? I am 
> trying to reuse that scanner; don't want to create e-waste (Climate 
> Change Nut ;-)). Do have couple of decades of programming experience 
> although in windows.
>
> -Neel.

I'm completely with you on the e-waste thing! We have a lot of old stuff 
here that we keep going regardless of what the manufacturers would 
prefer. ;)

So the first thing that I usually say about trying to get a new scanner 
working with SANE is to try to determine if an existing backend would 
suffice. It is indeed possible that the artec_eplus48u backend would 
work but it is by no means guaranteed that the protocol is the same. 
Even scanners that look completely identical sometimes have completely 
different innards.

I'm not at all familiar with this family of scanners. On our supported 
scanner page (http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html) we list 
"Astraslim" and "Astraslim 6000" as sharing the same USB ids as your 
scanner, both of which are not currently supported. Looking around the 
web, I can only find references to Astraslim AS6000 which might be the 
same thing.

What I would be tempted to do is try to locate a Windows driver for the 
machine and capture some traffic during a scan to see if it matches with 
the protocol supported by the artec_eplus48u backend.
I don't believe that we have any documentation on that protocol though: 
you would have to look through the backend code to get a feel for what 
you expect to see in the Wireshark trace. That would at least tell you 
that the backend had a chance of working with the scanner.

If it looks radically different, then you will either have to figure out 
if a different backend will work or you would have to start a fresh one. 
One thing you might have to do (entirely at your own risk I might add) 
is crack it open and see what chippery is inside. This may or may not 
help you identify what is driving it. Some of the older scanners had 
special scanner-on-a-chip drivers what we have backends specifically 
targeting, whereas you might just find a generic microcontroller, some 
RAM and a motor driver in which case you get no clue as to what the 
protocol might be.

Looking at the manpage for the artec_eplus48u backend, it supports the 
GT6816 driver chip so you might find that device inside. That manpage 
also notes that the currently supported scanners required a firmware 
file to be loaded. You would normally get that from the Windows driver, 
probably from the original installation disk, if you have it: 
http://www.sane-project.org/man/sane-artec_eplus48u.5.html

Hopes this helps.

Cheers,
Ralph