Using a Samsung Xpress C460FW with Gentoo Linux and Android KitKat for printing and scanning

INTRODUCTION

A work colleague has just received a Samsung Xpress C460FW MFP (laser printer, scanner, copier and fax machine) for small print jobs. It is possible to connect to it via USB, Direct USB, wired network, wireless network, Wi-Fi Direct and NFC; that’s impressive for a MFP that can be purchased for GBP 270 in the UK.

I wanted to use the C460FW to print and scan from my laptop running Gentoo Linux, and also to print and scan from my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 running Android KiKat. It turned out that I was able to do all of those, and it was not difficult to set up.

A technician from the IT Support department had already entered a static IP address, subnet mask and default gateway IP address via the C460FW’s control panel to connect it to the office’s wired network. So my options to connect to this particular C460FW are: the wired network for Linux; Wi-Fi Direct for Linux and Android; NFC for Android.

I had never used Wi-Fi Direct before, but it turned out to be easy in Gentoo Linux on my laptop, and also easy in Android KitKat on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4. I had never used NFC before either, and that also turned out to be easy on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Samsung has a series of videos on YouTube explaining how to use Wi-Fi Direct and NFC for printing, scanning and faxing with the C460FW from a Samsung smartphone; here are links to a few of them:

Samsung Smart Printing – 01 NFC Connect

Samsung Smart Printing – 02 Wi Fi Direct

Samsung Smart Printing – 03 Wi Fi

Samsung Smart Printing – 04 NFC Print

Samsung Smart Printing – 05 NFC Scan

Samsung Smart Printing – 06 NFC Fax

Samsung Smart Printing – 11 Samsung Mobile Print App(Printer Status)

PRINTING

Linux

Wired connection

I had installed the package net-print/samsung-unified-linux-driver Version 1.02 from a Portage local overlay back in March 2013 when I needed to print to a different model of Samsung MFP, so I thought I would see if that driver would work with the C460FW. I opened the CUPS Printer Manager in a browser window (http://localhost:631/) to configure my Gentoo installation to print to the device via the wired network. ‘Samsung C460 Series‘ was in the list of discovered network printers in the CUPS Printer Manager, and the driver ‘Samsung C460 Series PS‘ was displayed at the top of the list of models, so it was a piece of cake to set up the printer via CUPS, and I was able to print a test page in no time at all. My colleague uses a laptop running Windows 7, and he had to install the Windows driver from a Samsung CD that came with the C460FW.

Wireless connection

As the IT Support technician had configured the C460FW to print via the office wired network rather than the office wireless network, I decided to configure my laptop to print via Wi-Fi Direct, just to learn about Wi-Fi Direct, really. On the C460FW’s control panel I selected Network > Wireless > Wi-Fi Direct and enabled Wi-Fi Direct. Scrolling through the Wi-Fi Direct entries in the LCD I saw the following information:

Device Name: C460 Series
Network Key: <an 8-digit code>
IP address: 192.168.003.001

Two new networks were listed under ‘Available connections’ in plasma-nm (the KDE GUI front-end to NetworkManager) on my laptop: ‘DIRECT-HeC460 Series‘ and ‘DIRECT-SqC460 Series‘, both using WPA2-PSK encryption. I used the control panel of the C460FW to print a network configuration report in order to check which of the two SSIDs I should select, and it is ‘DIRECT-HeC460 Series‘ (I found out later that an adjacent room also has a C460FW and its Wi-Fi Direct SSID is ‘DIRECT-SqC460 Series‘). So I selected ‘DIRECT-HeC460 Series‘ and plasma-nm prompted me to enter a network password. I entered the 8-digit key I had found from the C460FW’s LCD panel (it’s also listed in the printed network configuration report), and NetworkManager connected to the printer.

In exactly the same way as I do when setting up any printer in Linux, I launched Firefox, opened the CUPS Printer Manager page, clicked on ‘Administration’ > ‘Add Printer’ and entered the user name ‘root’ and the password in the pop-up window. Again the ‘Add Printer’ page had ‘Samsung C460 Series‘ in the list of discovered network printers, so I just selected it and clicked on ‘Continue’. As I had already set up the printer in CUPS for the wired network connection and given it the name ‘Samsung_C460FW_office‘, I entered the name ‘Samsung_C460FW_office_WiFi_Direct‘ to distinguish it from the wired network entry, entered a Description and Location, and clicked on ‘Continue’. The next page had ‘Samsung C460 Series PS‘ first in the driver list so I selected that, clicked on ‘Add Printer’ and that was it. I was able to print a test page from the CUPS Printer Manager, and the printer is now included the list of printers in Linux applications’ print dialogues.

When I want to print using Wi-Fi Direct the only thing I need to remember to do first is select ‘DIRECT-HeC460 Series‘ in the network GUI on the KDE Panel, so that the connection is active when I click ‘Print’ in whichever application I want to print from.

Given the ease of printing via the wired network and Wi-Fi Direct, I have no doubts that printing would also work had the C460FW been configured for the office wireless network instead of the wired network.

Duplex printing

The only downside to the Samsung Xpress C460FW is that it only supports manual duplex printing. If you specify duplex printing when printing from Windows, Samsung’s Windows driver prints all the odd-numbered pages in reverse order and displays a message in Windows telling you what to do next (turn over the pile of paper and put it back in the paper tray!), but in Linux it’s not difficult to work out what you have to do: you simply have to print all the odd-numbered sides first, turn over the paper, then print all the even-numbered sides. The print dialogue in Linux applications gives you the option to print only odd-numbered pages or only even-numbered pages, so there is no problem. The print dialogue in some Linux applications allows you to print pages in reverse order as well but, if not, you have to reverse the order yourself before printing the even-numbered pages (i.e. put Page 1 face down at the top of the pile then Page 3 face down under it, and so on). It’s not a big deal unless the document has a large number of pages.

Android

As you would expect with devices from the same manufacturer, setting up my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to print with the Samsung Xpress C460FW via WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) was easy. When I selected ‘Print’ on the Galaxy Note 4, it gave me the option to print via wireless network or Wi-Fi Direct. I chose the latter and, as I had already enabled Wi-Fi Direct on the C460FW’s control panel, the printer name was displayed in the list of available devices. I selected it, a blue LED began flashing on the C460FW’s control panel and the LCD prompted me to press the WPS button (on the left of the control panel). As soon as I pressed that, the C460FW printed the document sent by my Galaxy Note 4. From then onwards, I just needed to select ‘Print’ on the Galaxy Note 4, select the printer from the list of available devices, and the document is printed. When I want to print using Wi-Fi Direct the only thing I need to remember to do first on the Galaxy Note 4 is select ‘DIRECT-HeC460 Series‘ as the Wi-Fi network.

NFC

I then decided to try to print using NFC. I placed the Galaxy Note 4, without Wi-Fi enabled and with the Home Screen displayed (not the Lock Screen), on the NFC label on top of the C460FW; Android launched Play Store and prompted me to install Samsung Mobile Print, which I did. Now when I place the Galaxy Note 4 on the NFC label, the Galaxy Note 4 automatically enables Wi-Fi, connects to the C460FW directly and displays the Mobile Print app showing the options Print, Scan and Fax, and a page of icons labelled: Gallery, Camera, Google Drive, E-mail, Web page, Document, Facebook, DropBox, Evernote, OneDrive and Box, as well as a Settings icon to configure the printer (paper size etc.). I am able to select a document, photograph, Web page, etc. on the Galaxy Note 4 and print it. It is also possible to launch the Mobile Print app first and then place the Galaxy Note 4 on the C460FW.

NFC is not entirely trouble-free, though. Sometimes the Galaxy Note 4 displays a ‘Device not found‘ message but I can still print. Sometimes the Galaxy Note 4 displays the message ‘Connecting printer. There was some error while connecting to this device. Check your printer and try again. If NFC Pin was changed then please enter new NFC Pin.‘ and the two devices will not connect. Powering off then on the C460FW solves that. Sometimes the Galaxy Note 4 connects to another wireless network instead of to the C460FW via Wi-Fi Direct and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 then has to disconnect automatically from the other network. Sometimes the C460FW prompts me to press its WPS button and the Galaxy Note 4 then connects via Wi-Fi Direct but the Mobile Print app then displays the error message ‘Device not found. To troubleshoot please check – C460 Series is powered on. – Wi-Fi direct is enabled on C460 Series. – C460 Series and Mobile are connected to the same network.‘. Again, powering off then on the C460FW solves that. Despite these hiccups, printing via NFC is still handy.

SCANNING

Linux

I found out how to get the C460FW scanner working by consulting the third-party Web site The Samsung Unified Linux Driver Repository which someone created to provide .deb packages for the Samsung driver as well as tips on how to get Samsung printers and scanners working in Linux. It turned out to be relatively straightforward to scan, both via the office wired network and via Wi-Fi Direct. I edited the file /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf and replaced the following:

#Samsung C460 Series
usb 0x04e8 0x3468

with the following in order to use the C460FW to scan via the office wired network:

#Samsung C460 Series
#usb 0x04e8 0x3468
#Wired network static address of this C460FW:
tcp 10.90.21.125

or with the following in order to use the C460FW to scan via Wi-Fi Direct:

#Samsung C460 Series
#usb 0x04e8 0x3468
#Wi-Fi Direct address of this C460FW:
tcp 192.168.3.1

I found the IP addresses from the network configuration report I printed earlier.

I was able to use the two Linux scanning applications I normally use, XSane and gscan2pdf, to scan via the wired network and via Wi-Fi Direct. The resulting scans were very good. Given the ease of scanning via the wired network and Wi-Fi Direct, I have no doubts that scanning would work via a wireless network had the C460FW been configured for the office wireless network instead of the wired network.

Android

To use NFC to scan a document I place the Galaxy Note 4, without Wi-Fi enabled and with the Home Screen displayed (not the Lock Screen), on the NFC label on top of the C460FW. The Galaxy Note 4 enables Wi-Fi, connects automatically to the C460FW directly and launches the Mobile Print app showing the options Print, Scan and Fax. It is also possible to launch the Mobile Print app first and then place the Galaxy Note 4 on the C460FW. In other words, the procedure is exactly the same as when wanting to print via NFC. If I select Scan, the Galaxy Note 4 displays buttons for previewing and scanning. Amongst other things, the app’s Settings menu allows you to select whether you want to save the scanned image as a JPEG, PNG or PDF file. The hiccups mentioned above when printing via NFC also apply to scanning. Nevertheless, scanning from the C460FW to the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 via NFC is still handy.

CONCLUSION

As I am mainly interested in printing text documents I have only tried to print a few colour photographs on plain copier paper, and they look good. Text in documents looks crisp. Despite the lack of automatic duplex printing the C460FW is an excellent peripheral, especially for the price, although I don’t pay for the consumables so I have no idea of the operating costs. The ease with which I got it printing and scanning in Gentoo Linux (laptop) and Android KitKat (Samsung Galaxy Note 4) means that I would definitely consider purchasing this model for home use.