USB to Cat5 printer help needed

i recently got this Amazon.com for my Canon Pixma MG3620 so i could use on my network for both pc’s which is all wired but no luck i dont know if it was just a dead part as i

tried on some other devices an still no joy or maybe its not the right kind of part for this task is thats the case which kind of adapter should i get my budget for said part is no more then 60$

my network gear layout is as followed

router - FIREWALLA GOLD (in router mode)
5-port giga-switch

config is the giga-switch , nas an printer are direct to the FWG an the pc’s an assorted lan devices like both nvidia shields are on the 5-port giga-switch

It looks like you need the rest of the kit

But, it just extends USB over ethernet by the looks of it, there is no way it can convert your printer to a network printer

You need something like this

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that bottom pick looks like the one

what NAS do you have? some can be used as a print server.

That printer has Wi-Fi, correct? So all you need is a Wi-Fi router. If you’re worried about security, your Firewalla Gold claims to do network segmentation. That means you could create a DMZ network (just for the Wi-Fi) where devices can only respond to requests from PCs on the inside, but otherwise can’t make any connections to anything.

Most USB print servers will work if you ONLY want to print. It’s much trickier to handle scanning. There are a few devices which try to support MFPs, but you’ll have to do your research if you want to try to go that way…

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I personally would do it differently if I needed to connect the printer to the network.

Buy a cheap, small sbc… the cheapest you can buy in your geolocation.
Perhaps something to the taste of FriendlyELEC ZeroPi, it has USB 2.0 and Eth 1Gb, Debian(armbian) works fine on it.
You add the printer via usb in debian, then share it on the network or make a print server on sbc.

And at the end of the day it would be cheaper than buying this adapter/card for $50+

pi

P.S

These USB adapters/network cards will not work 100% of the time with your printer. The printer must have such options and be able to handle such a device. Which in the case of most printers does not occur unless the manufacturer has provided such an option, but then he rather offers an appropriate add-on.

There is no magic that the USB from the printer will magically move to Eth and start advertising its presence on the local network, it does not work like that and no such card will give you that. You need a print server or make one yourself as I mentioned based on sbc.

Sometimes with ready-made print servers there are compatibility problems with a certain printer model and you can’t do anything about it, which is not a problem in the case of your own sbc.

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I was prretty much thinking like @TimHolus here. Just connecting the printer to a pi would work fine. I used to attach any peripherals to laptops and home computers (when those were a thing) so could run Windows Home network sharing so all printers and attached network storage would be accessible from anywhere, Then having a sort of jumper where to you could remote from the outside and then boom, you pretty much have a simple corporate environment without bs inbetween.

Running this all in Windows used to be pretty simple and fine, but most of the features are still just sitting in the CPL, if you know how to access that on Win11, not even sure it works like that anymore, haven’t used Win11 much yet.

On Linux, I haven’t tried it but I’m already expecting a little bit of messing around.

Maybe instead of a Home PC I’ll go with a Home workshop server, with all connections…
maybe I should go completely digital…

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This is a dumb “GDI”/host-based printer so you’re going to have more trouble than it’s worth and as a pointed out earlier use Wifi or buy a printer that isn’t cheap as chips and actually supports Ethernet.

Oh? What’s your recommendation for a Linux web interface to control a scanner?

Strange that you just said a Pi (runs Linux) would work fine, now you’re not sure.

It’s very easy to set-up Linux as a print server for anything. Jump into the the CUPS web interface at http://localhost:631/ … select the USB device it detected. Select the printer model if listed and the driver will be installed and you can send plain postscript/PDF/text/images to port 631 via HTTP or IPP. It’ll accept binary data as well if you want to install the driver on all the clients, but you don’t need to if the printer driver is available and installed on Linux. If no printer driver is available, then select raw and then you need the driver on all the clients. For extra backwards compatibility, install and start cups-lpd as well to enable lp/lpd spooling to port 515. Will need to open those ports in the firewall as well.

But MFPs / scanners, that’s a greater level of complexity, and there isn’t exactly a standard for that.

OP also wants a scanner over the network?

I would still go my way with sbc… Debian/Ubuntu at sbc, 2in1 printer via usb to sbc, sbc xfce+xrdp as remote gui without needing to do it via web gui.
Treat the device normally as local, log on from different pc to sbc as needed to perform the scan and share the result via smb. However, printing as you mentioned is a simple matter over the network.

Perfect? No, but usable. Alternatively, you can play with Sane or something else that is popular now… :wink:

Do I see correctly that has usb ports? It’s based on ubuntu… so adding a print server and possibly a scanner shouldn’t be a problem.

Why would you control a scanner over the network? Are you talking about scan to email functionality? Or scan to file?

So using a Pi solves those issues. Just set the scan folder from the printer as a network share.

control a scanner over the network …no but having a scanner direct connect to the hp an with some native app / plug in scan a image or doc direct to a folder on the drive or drives to access later vi one or the both pc’s would be nice

You have several options, you have your expensive router that has usb ports and an Ubuntu-based OS, so it will accept any combination of linux software. Personally, however, I wouldn’t do it on such a device for the sake of cleanliness.

The second option is to buy an SBC, or some pc/lap, and install the system at your discretion. You want to buy an HP pc as a NAS, you could also connect a printer here, the only question is how truenas will cope with a 2in1 printer.

The third option is the same as the second one, only an additional device physically separate from the NAS, acting only as a remote central printer and scanner service point.

Personally, I would do the third option… Some small ultra-cheap and low-power sbc/pc/lap with Debian/Ubuntu + xfce + xrdp and a 2in1 printer connected via USB.

This way I would just have a normal desktop machine that hosts a local printer/scanner and hosts it on LAN, all in a gui, optionally smb/nfs for sharing scan results… Relatively fast, convenient, without limiting device options.

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thanks for that info