Epson Utilities

EPSON Utilities

English Version by Jean-Jacques Sarton

Get various informations from an EPSON printer and check / clean noozle.

This tool may wotk for the folowing printers:

EPSON Stylus Color 800 / 1520 / 850 / 440 / 640 / 740 / 3000 / 900 / 460 / 660 / 760 / 860 / 1160

EPSON Stylus Photo 700 / EX / 750 / 1200

This was only tested on the bold marked printers. If you have succesfully worked with one of these printers or an other EPSON printer, please mail this to jj.sarton@t-online.de. I will make test on zhe 660 and 1160.

These tools require a Linux Kernel 2.2.x or greater. The graphical user interface is build with the programm xtpanel which is also required and with an own program (getInk) which is based on the Xaw[3d] library.

This tool ask the EPSON printer attached to a parallel port how many ink remain in the cartridge or send a message to the printer which cause printing of a nozzle pattern check or perform a head cleaning..

The program getInk was wrotten for viewing of the ramaining ink quantity. This program required that the include file for X, Xt and Xaw/Xaw3d are installed. If getInk will not be compiled you have to install the X-decelopment package of you distribution.

The graphical interface:

Selection of the printer port

This is the first window you will see. The first action, you must perform, is to tell the utilities on which port the printer is attached.

main window

After selection of the port the main window will appear if an EPSON printer was detected. The main window allow the following actions:

reading and displaying of the reamining ink quantity
printing the nozzle check pattern
perform a head cleaning

Message/Error box

This message box may be popped up if the printer don´t answer (busy or port reserved by an other process.

The following pictures show the windows poped up if you enquire the remaining ink quantity.

Ink quantity window for a Stylus Color

Ink quantity window for a Stylus Photo

Installing epsUtils

Login as root and type make install in the directory containing this file.
After this you may install the start icon in your taskbar or on the desktop by selecting and moving the epsUtils KDE-Link to the appropriate place.

Uninstall epsUtils

Description

The tools use the binary epsCmd which allow to send a few commands to the printer and the binary getInk wich is a lttle Xaw based GUI. These programs use a library file (rwLib.a) wich contain a function for sending of the commands.

A TTY based version is also provided. The main script is epsCmd.sh. This script use the binary epsCmd which include also the rwLib.a file. I you have problems you may pass the -debug option to the epsCmd.sh script.

If you have problems

A few printers need a long time in order to process the inquiries (read remainin ink quantity and get printer type). If this occurs you have to increase the delay time between sendig of the command and reading of the informations.

The delay time is to be set in the file /usr/local/bin/epsUtils.sh. The line DELAY=500 may be corrected to
DELAY=4000. This increase the wait time to 4000 ms, so the printer will have 4 second time in order
to wakeup and send the requested information to the host.

If you use the getInk programs directly, you may also modify the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/GetInk.
The last line contain the following:
!GetInk*Dev: lp0
!GetInk*timeout: 2000

You may modify the values (lp0 for the port) and the wait time (2000). You must also remove the comment cahracter "!" at line begin.

If you use the TTY based utility epsCmd.sh, you may modify the assignment:
port=lp0
timeout=500
to better values.

Internationalisation

The tools as this time can "speak" english, german and french. Adding of further language is very easy.

The file epsUtils.sh contain only a few textes. You need only to provide the textes for your own language and insure that the variable LANG, LC_ALL or LC_MESSAGES is set properlly.

For example if the new language will be polish, one of the above variable must be set and the string will begin with pl. You must insert the following (with the correct textes) in the file epsUtils.sh:
      fr*)
            msg="Utilitaires EPSON"
            choice="choisir le port"
            quit="Fin"
            ch="Nettoyage"
            nc="Test"
            ink="Encre"
            ninf="Pas d'information pour "
            ok="OK"
            ;;
       pl*)
            msg="EPSON Utilities"
            choice="Choose Port"
            ink="Ink Quantity"
            quit="QUIT"
            ch="Clean head"
            nc="Nozzle check"
            ninf="No Information from "
            ok="OK"
           ;;
        *)
            msg="EPSON Utilities"

The X11 program getInk wich is called from epsUtils.sh has his own resource file. The file GetInk provided with this package will be copied to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/GetInk, and contain 3 language specific resources. You have to provide the correct textes for them, here an example for the polish language:

GetInk*inkOkBTN.background: #cfcfcf
GetInk*Ink_de.inkOkBTN.Label: Ende
GetInk*Ink_en.inkOkBTN.Label: quit
GetInk*Ink_fr.inkOkBTN.Label: terminer
GetInk*Ink_pl.inkOkBTN.Label: quit
! Default text if language is unknown
GetInk*inkOkBTN.Label: quit

The new text was inserted before the comment ! Default text if language is unknown
_pl is for recognition of the language quit is the translated text.

If you make translation, please send me the modified files, and state in the files what you have done and your name.

Jean-Jacques Sarton jj.sarton@t-online.de

You may also translate this document and send it back to jj.sarton@t-online.de