How do I automatically scan documents on Linux from the terminal?

Question

I want to automatically get my printer to scan documents on a set interval, so that I can swap out and scan my documents without needing to click a button on my computer every time. I also need the ability to save documents to a certain image format and quality. Preferably, I would like to be able to do this from a bash script, so that it should work on any distro. How do I do this?

Answer 1

I have created a script just for this purpose. https://github.com/aaronfranke/Linux-tools/blob/master/all-distros/autoscan.sh

Edit the variables at the top before running. You must specify your printer's address, which can be found by running scanimage -L. You can also specify a time interval, a format, and quality (PPI). The script will save your scanned images to a random 6-character filename.

Note: This script requires the scanimage and mogrify commands to be installed.

#!/bin/bash

# autoscan.sh - A script for automatically scanning from a printer/scanner and saving to a random file.

# Must be set to your printer's address. Use `scanimage -L` to get a list of printers.
PRINTER="hpaio:/net/OfficeJet_4650_series?ip=192.168.0.100"

# Optional variables, feel free to adjust.
TIME=30     # TIME (in seconds), should be at least 10.
FORMAT=jpg  # FORMAT must be understood by mogrify. Ex: jpg, png, tiff, bmp.
QUALITY=200 # QUALITY must be supported by your printer. Common ones are 300, 200, 150, and 75.




if [ ! -f /usr/bin/scanimage ]; then
    echo "This script requires the \`scanimage\` command, which was not found. Exiting. "
    exit 1
fi
if [ ! -f /usr/bin/mogrify ]; then
    echo "This script requires the \`mogrify\` command from the \`imagemagick\` package, which was not found. Exiting. "
    exit 2
fi

echo " "
echo "Computer will start automatically scanning in a few seconds... "
SLTIME=$(($TIME-5))
sleep 5

while true; do
    FILENAME=$(mktemp -u XXXXXX)
    echo " "
    echo "Scanning and saving to $FILENAME.$FORMAT... "
    scanimage -d $PRINTER --mode Color --resolution $QUALITY --format tiff > $FILENAME.tiff 2>/dev/null
    mogrify -format $FORMAT $FILENAME.tiff
    rm $FILENAME.tiff
    echo " "
    echo "Done scanning $FILENAME.$FORMAT, waiting $TIME seconds for next scan... "
    sleep $SLTIME
    echo " "
    echo "5... "
    sleep 1
    echo "4... "
    sleep 1
    echo "3... "
    sleep 1
    echo "2... "
    sleep 1
    echo "1... "
    sleep 1
done