Epson Inkjet Printer Management
by
Joydeep Bakshi
12-DEC-2005

Copyright and License

Copyright©2005-2007 by Joydeep Bakshi. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Content License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at opencontent.org ).


Credits

All credits of designing the softwares mentioned in this document go to the respective author/s of the particular software.


Disclaimer

I don't guarantee the accuracy of anything that follows, so use this guide at your own risk. In other words, if by following this guide you trash your computer, don't blame me.

Easy Epson Inkjet Printer Management

Now a days we can have a lots of tools for auto detecting and configuring printers under Linux. "printconf" is such a strong tool which can auto detect and configure even USB printers with out any problem (Definitely it should have the specific printer driver in its database). But to make a printer working is not everything, we also need tools for managing the printers.

There are two superb tools which make the Management of Epson inkjet Printers under Linux, just like a child's play.


escputil

escputil by Robert Krawitz is a command line tool. escputil is also the backend of Printer Manager under KDE for Epson inkjet printers. escputil comes with a number of useful options.

I have Epson Stylus C20SX connected at /dev/lp0 under my Linux box..

"escputil -M" shows the Epson models it can supports

"escputil -i -r /dev/lp0" checks the ink level. It returns its out put as below

Ink color   Percent remaining

Black         99
Cyan          94
Magenta   94
Yellow       94

-r means raw device. Here it is /dev/lp0 which is the device node for my printer

"escputil -c" cleans printer head

"escputil -n" runs nozzle check program


Note one important point that whenever you have to use raw-device option (-r), you have to have read/write permission on /dev/lp0. In my debian box there is already a group called lp which consists of /dev/lp0. So I have just added my account to the group "lp" and have no problem to use  -r  related option.

As you know your printer model, you can align the printer head by
"escputil -a -m <model-name>" like for my Epson Stylus C20SX, I use

"escputil -a -m C20sx"

You can execute this command from any account. But if you want escputil to detect your printer to get the model automatically, you have to use

"escputil -a -r /dev/lp0"

Hence the account from where you will execute the command has to be root or the account should be a member of a group which allow the read/write permission on printer device node.

In both the cases after getting the printer model, escputil instructs step by step about what to do to align the printer head. You have to give your choice only.


ttink and mtink

Jean-Jacques Sarton has designed ttink to manage Epson inkjet printers. mtink is the GUI of ttink from the same author.

"ttink -l" shows all the Epson models it support

The command line should be "ttink[mandatory][optional] [only one action] [misc]"

"-d <device_name>" comes under the mandatory section. Only one action can be executed at a time. You can define the printer model in optional section as "-m <model_name>" to avoid the autodetection all the time. Adding "-D" in optional section insists on using D4 protocol always. "-L" can be added in the misc section to debug output for D4 protocol.

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