[sane-devel] *** GMX Spamverdacht *** Re: backend for Plustek PL-812 // anyboady working on this - who can get me on speed

Marco Freudenberger Marco.Freudenberger at gmx.de
Sat Jan 5 21:07:23 UTC 2008


Thanks a lot of good tips there .

I know that it's not a "let's do a scanner driver thing tonight" thing 
and can take some time and efforts. Thanks again for the little push ahead !

Marco

m. allan noah schrieb:
> On 1/5/08, Marco Freudenberger <Marco.Freudenberger at gmx.de> wrote:
>   
>> Hi list ....
>>
>> I'm urgently looking for a backend driver for a Plustek PL 812 (USB /
>> ADF + Flatbed) scanner. Looks like there's (bu-huuuu) currently no
>> backend that supports it.
>>     
>
> [snip]
>
>   
>> But it would be great if somebody could help me alittle to bring me on
>> speed making the first baby steps. I plan to use a USB sniffer
>> (hardware) on the PL-812 on Windows to try to reverse engineer the
>> protocol. I don't think this will be the worst part. But actually, I
>> don't know where to start with developing and have a few questions to
>> the more experienced guys out there:
>>
>> 1) the backend-writing doc
>> (http://www.sane-project.org/backend-writing.txt) suggest to start with
>> a standalone test programm. Is there some kind of a framework or
>> existing test programm that can be modified for starting ?
>>     
>
> if you use benoit's usbsnoop instead of a hardware sniffer, there is a
> program (usbsnoop2libusb) which will turn that into a c prog that you
> can hack on. it cannot interpret the meaning of the packets, but it
> can be a good place to start. there are also programs in the usbsnoop
> dir of the sane experimental tree, which can clean up logs from
> usbsnoop as well. i am fond of spike4.pl myself :)
>
>   
>> 2) the same document suggest (sounds like a good plan!) to extend
>> existing backends whenever possible or use existing backends as a
>> starting point at least. Any idea which one could be a good starting
>> point for the PL-812 ?
>>     
>
> open the scanner and figure out what chips are in it. it may already
> be supported by an existing backend, just needs some tweaks to know
> about that model.
>
>   
>> 3) Is there any further documentation out there to get me on speed ? Or
>> books on that subject-matter (also the relevant parts of Unix / USB
>> programming that might be needed) ?
>>     
>
> google for 'usb in a nutshell', and the usb 1.1 specs. the libusb docs
> are almost useless.
>
>   
>> 4) What is an ususal ammount of time one would plan for developing a
>> backend for a certain scanner ?
>>     
>
> >from a couple hours if it is an already supported chip, to hundreds of
> hours if it is completely new and you have no docs.
>
>   
>> 5) BTW, my environment will be a Kubuntu Linux distribution. Anything
>> special about that ?
>>     
>
> nope, as long as you install the libusb devel headers and gcc, you
> should be good.
>
>   
>> Thanks for your help! I know, those questions sound like I will never
>> make that happen in a reasonable ammount of time, but once I know where
>> to start that will change - I'm really a good and incredible quick
>> developer, usually  ...
>>     
>
> i used to say the same thing, until i developed the epjitsu backend
> with no docs. i dont know if i will ever do that again... :)
>
> allan
>   

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