
One of the most prominent scanner and printer manufactures that have this requirement is HP.Ĥ. However, some brands will require some additional drivers to be installed. Most scanners will hopefully work out of the box. This is all you need to get SANE running on a Raspberry Pi. With the package list up to date, we can now install SANE using the command below. We can perform both of these actions by using the following two commands on your device. Before installing SANE, we should update the package list and upgrade any out-of-date packages. If the latest version supports the scanner, please skip to the “ Compiling SANE from Source Code” section.Ģ. If this version does not support your scanner, then check the latest compatibility list.

You can check the list of supported scanners by this version on the official SANE website. At the time of publishing, the version of the scanner software provided through the repository is 1.0.27. The only downside of this is that the version of SANE on the Pi’s repository is usually much older than the official release.ġ. Installing the SANE software to a Raspberry Pi is a straightforward process as it is available from the official package repository.

Installing the SANE Software on the Raspberry Pi

This tutorial was tested on a Raspberry Pi 400 running the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS Buster. Equipmentīelow is a list of the equipment we used when setting up our Raspberry Pi as a scanner server. Instead, you will need to use a 3rd party client that supports the SANE protocol. Please note that as Windows uses its own proprietary API, SANE does not work natively with the built-in utilities. This project is a perfect accompaniment for those already using their Raspberry Pi as a print server. For example, instead of buying a Wi-Fi enabled scanner you can instead introduce that functionality by using a device like the Raspberry Pi Zero. Setting your Pi up as a scanner server is a great way to modernize your aging scanner. We will even show you how to take this a step further by turning your Raspberry Pi into a scanner server, allowing you to scan documents from an unconnected computer.

Within this guide, you will learn how to use SANE to talk with a supported scanner connected to your Raspberry Pi. This software acts as a standardized way for accessing scanners. For those who have never heard of this software before, SANE stands for Scanner Access Now Easy.
