Canon PIXMA MG3. 65. A4 desktop printer and scanner. The 3. 65. 0 printer. Given the sorts of printers I normally test here at Northlight I wasn’t expecting great things from this little printer, but it’s for Karen’s office and is only going to get light print duty – colour and B& W. It’s connected wirelessly to our network, and works from all our Macs and Karen’s i. Pad. Features. Actually not bad at the price – I’ve seen a pair of the higher capacity XL carts advertised at more than we paid for the printer ; -)Canon Says…Compact All- In- One for printing, copying and scanning. Double sided document printing. Prints borderless, long lasting photos. Connect and print with your smartphone or tablet using the Canon PRINT Inkjet/ SELPHY app. Apple “Air. Print” and Google Cloud Print support. Print and scan using PIXMA Cloud Link. WLAN “Pict. Bridge” to print pictures directly from compatible cameras. ![]() I’d note that I’m one of those rare people who doesn’t use a mobile phone very often, so only the first three are of real interest. Setting up the printer. Pretty basic setup with the two cartridges, power lead, plenty of setup guides (in a vast array of languages) and a coffee mug coaster (aka Windows only install disk). You’ll need to go round and remove a collection of orange tapes and a clip at the back. These are for transport, and the printer doesn’t like working if you leave them in place. A panel at the front lowers to show two grey plastic clips that hold the print carts in place. These flip down for you to insert the cartridges. The clips are flipped back up when the carts are in place. The printer will initialise itself and should be in a state to connect to your Wi. Fi network, or directly via a USB lead (not supplied) to a computer or other device. The setup guides take you clearly through what’s needed. I first set it up via my Mac. Book Pro – connected wirelessly to the Northlight Images network. First up I need to download the install software – a web page lets me select which printer I’m using. The installer walks you through what’s needed. ![]() Top VIdeos. Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/jujaitaly/public/index.php on line 447. See 3. 65. 0 Canon install pages]Of course, the printer needs to be on the same network, and able to connect to the computer you are using. All looks well, in that it’s found the printer and knows where I’m connecting from.
Well, it looked OK for a while, but then the communications failed – probably because our network is relatively locked down. I’ve the option of a WPS pin code connection (not really, this is also disabled here…)So, out comes the good old USB cable, and all is well. The software still needs access details for our network, but this is easily carried out. After this, the software lets you install a range of Canon software, that may be of some use. Fortunately, there is excellent web based support (you can install the user guide) which gives an overview of all the various options. Phone and pad options…More printing apps…In this last screen shot, note the backwards ‘L’ set of buttons at the right. This is Canon’s quick utility menu popup, lasting about 1. There is a lot you can do here – not at all bad given the price of the printer. The printer needs setting up to use – on my Mac this can also be done via the System prefs. The printer is just found on the network and added. You then have access to the printer utility, with the usual cleaning options. Other settings can be changed, such as allowing auto wake up when accessed. This saves having to go to the printer to switch it on before printing. A quick check of ink levels after setup and printing a test page. The printer has a web page where many other settings can be altered – note that it needs the printer serial number as an initial password, so write it down somewhere. ![]() One minor issue I noticed in using Google Chrome to access the page on Karen’s Mac – Chrome threw a wobbly about insecure certificates and decided to inform Google – I’m not changing settings on someone else’s computer, but do note the potential issue – the printer has certificate management available via the web page, but I’m just not going there… (it worked fine via Safari). Loading paper. The paper loads simply in the front of the printer, but there is no tray, so take care that the paper is loaded correctly, since there is a small plastic slider that lines it up. For printers like this use good quality uncurled fresh paper – paper jams are an annoyance to fix. If you want to use double sided printing then take care with paper quality and loading. Scanning. The printer can be used as a photocopier via the buttons on top, but also offers scanning at up to 1. It’s nowhere near the specialist Epson V8. I looked at a while ago, but, once again, it’s rather good for the price. Here are some of the scan options when using the IJ Scan Utility. There are plenty more options to explore, including what applications are opened up when you scan in different modes. Here’s my business card (unfolded) – with the image automatically opened in Photoshop – the crop and straightening was fully automatic.‘Real’ scanning. I was pleased to see that the 3. Vue. Scan. Vue. Scan works with almost every scanner I’ve come across, ranging from my ancient UMAX Power. Look III transparency/flatbed scanner (connected via a Firewire< -> SCSI adapter) to the MG3. Canon FS4. 00. 0 negative scanner. Vuescan supported scanners. Photo print and profiling. The printer is supposed to print photos – how good is it? I decided to print an A4 profiling target, make an ICC profile and print one of my printer test images. To print the target, you need to print without colour management. I’ve two ways of doing this, either the Adobe Color Print Utility (win and Mac)Or the Mac Color. Sync utility (note the 1. I’ve selected ‘Pro Lustre’ as the media since I know that the Pinnacle Lustre 3. I’m using is quite similar. I load a single sheet – there’s no problem with the 3. In under a minute I’ve a profiling target. After leaving overnight I create an ICC printer profile with i. Profiler and the i. Sis patch reader. I don’t usually set much store in the little gamut volume displays, but comparing the 3. Canon PRO- 1. 00. I can see this anyway, just looking at the target sheet. Who’d have thought it… 1. Anyway, time for two test prints, one with the profile and one with printer colour management. The two test prints, viewed under domestic halogen lighting. The lower print is using the profile. There’s a distinct improvement in grey neutrality, but nowhere near what I’d be happy to use, especially for black and white. Trying out some 6×4 photo paper the printer produced some pleasing snaps, but of the sort of quality I’d expect from a 1hr photo process in a store. A quick check of ink levels shows how few big colour prints I’m going to see from a standard size ink cart…Conclusions and observations. It’s a simple to set up and use basic printer – the scanner works well and paper fed through it perfectly well. It doesn’t have a document feeder, but then again I’ve never needed one. Double sided print appeals to Karen’s thriftiness, as does the auto power down and wake- up. What’s not so good is an estimated £0. B& W and £0. 0. Moving to the larger XL carts brings estimated costs to £0. From a colour printing POV the fact that a colour cart only lasts as long as the first colour runs out is not so good, but my profiling test confirms that three colours and black just isn’t anywhere near the quality you get with more colours. If you intend to print photos at all often, look for a more expensive printer that has independent colour cartridges. I didn’t really expect stellar performance for photo printing – but I was surprised just how competent the printer was in many other respects. Building An Active RFID People / Asset Tracking System With Mesh Networking. Introduction. I was initially looking into off the shelf hardware, however was unable to find any readily available equipment (to the hobbyist market in low quantities) that was reasonably priced, and fit the requirements. Therefore partly as a personal project, and partly in preparation for a possible commercial product I decided to put together a prototype active RFID tracking System. The solution I came up with is based on 3 main hardware components, and 5 software components. It utilises mesh networking meaning that only a single reader needs to be physically connected to a PC, all other readers just require power. Hardware: Tags – Carried around / placed on assets to be tracked. Reader Nodes – Placed around the area where the assets need to be tracked in. PC Reader – Connected to the PC, receives data from reader nodes and sends it to the PC. The main hardware component used is the Synapse RF Engine, a 2. GHz transceiver module with built in support for running Python scripts, 2 UARTs, a number of GPIOs, and a 2. A low power mode. Software: Tags – Software running on the tag to send out a “ping” at a defined interval, then put the “tag” to sleep before sending another ping. Reader Nodes – Software running on the reader node hardware to listen for tag “pings”, and after receiving a ping, send the tag ID, reader node ID, and received signal strength to the PC Reader. PC Reader – Software running on the reader hardware to receive data over the air from the many reader nodes and forward it to the serial / USB interface. PC Serial to HTTP data forwarder – Software running on the PC that listens for data from the serial / USB connected PC Reader, and forwards that data via HTTP to a server. Location tracking processing / display GUI – Web based software to process the tag data into a location, and display it on a map. The software consists of Python used by the Tags, Reader Nodes, PC Reader. C# used by the “PC Serial to HTTP data forwarder”, and PHP, HTML, Java. Script, SVG used by the “Location tracking processing / display GUI”. Video showing simulation of tracking between 8 rooms, using 5 tags. For real life demo showing a single tag moving between 3 rooms see below. System Design. The system was originally designed around the principle of Trilateration. Reader Nodes are placed at fixed known positions around the room / rooms containing tags that need to be located. As long as a tag is within range of at least 3 reader nodes the tags position can be calculated by using the signal strength of the tag to each of the 3 nearest readers. However this approach turned out not to be very feasible since past around 2 meters the signal strength started fluctuating in a seemingly unpredictable way. It may be possible to predict / error correct for the fluctuations however I opted to go for a simpler approach of just plotting tags next to the reader with the highest signal strength (the one they are nearest to). This now means that readers need to be placed in each room (ideally centrally) where tags need to be tracked and it is only possible to determine a tag is in a room, and not its position in that room (although it is not used the original trilateration code has been left in the download). Using a two part system of sending the tag data to a web server (via a locally run data forwarding application) then displaying it back to clients in the browser has a number of advantages: Main application processing / display logic can be maintained in a single central location for one or more deployments. Location display / viewing GUI is cross platform (can be accessed via most modern browsers the have support for SVG excluding Internet Explorer). No software to install on client PCs viewing the map. Multiple users can logon and view the map at the same time. The use of mesh networking means that only a single device needs to be directly connected to a PC, all the others just need to be within range of any other unit that itself is either close to the PC, or close to another reader that is close to the PC. The makes setting up the system much easier as there is no need to wire each node to the PC / the network or have a PC next to each node. The nodes just require 3. V power. Tag Hardware. Parts List. Per individual tag. Note: I used a CR2. Rapid however both Farnel, and Future also have a selection available from various manufacturers. Building The Tag. I choose the Teko Enclosure because of its compact, credit card size. Unfortunately however this meant that the RF Engine would not fit vertically inside. I could have used one of the alternate form factor modules (sold by companies such as Panasonic that also support the Synapse firmware) however having the pins broken out is actually useful for updating the tag Python software / firmware at a later date. I therefore decided to bend over the pins, allowing one side to be plugged into the evaluation board as normal (albeit it a much looser fit) and the other to be plugged into the IDC header via an extension cable. I tried a number of approaches to bending over the pins, including bending them all at once using pliers, and trying to bend them against a flat surface, neither proved very fruitful. In the end I found the best approach was individually bend each using the tip of the pliers. In terms of wiring things are fairly straight forward, pin 2. I soldered to the top of the module to avoid obstructing the pins meaning they can still be plugged into the evaluation board/extension cable for reprogramming. I also used some heat shrink tubing to tidy things up. To secure the module in the enclosure I used two small stick on feet on the module itself, and two larger stick on feet to wedge the battery holder into a corner of the enclosure. Not being as adept as I could be with finding productions on Digikey’s site I took the approach of ordering two parts (3. M1. 32. 4- ND, SAM1. ND) really designed for PCB mounting and soldering a ribbon cable to them. A better approach (if such parts exist) would have been to purchase connectors that can mount directly to ribbon cable (therefore requiring no soldering), and to purchase suitable sized ribbon cable to fit. Note: If you are going to use the same approach I did and solder the connections then ensure the solder does not leak into the socket, otherwise it will not be possible to plug it in to the evaluation board. Reader Node Hardware. Parts List. Per individual reader – at least 3 reader nodes are required. Building The Reader Node. As with the tags in terms of wiring, the reader nodes are fairly straight forward, with pins 2. DC plug. As with the PC reader it would be possible to use the “SNAPstick USB Module Interface” to avoid the soldering work, and in this case a USB power supply e. Using the Maplin N5. FK box I found the modules only just fitted alongside the DC Plug, I had to remove one of small plastic mounting stands in the box to make it fit. The other small mounting stand served to secure the module in the box with one row of pins on the module fitting between it and the outer case wall. After the module and DC plug were fitted inside the box some space remained between the top of the module and the top of the box, therefore I used a single packing peanut to secure things. Something like hot glue could also be used however the packing peanut means the modules can quickly and easily be removed and put back into the box, e. Note: If you are looking for additional range the Synapse RF1. PC6 (including a transmit amplifier) or RF1. PD6 (including a transmit amplifier and allowing connector of an external antenna) may be more suitable for the both the PC reader, and reader nodes. PC Reader Hardware. Parts List. Building The Reader. To simplify the process of linking the 3. V Synapse module to the PC (i. MAX2. 32 and the extra PCB / wiring that would involve) I used a 3. V FTDI USB to serial cable. The USB end plugs straight into the PC and provides a virtual serial port, the other end connects to the UART pins on the Synapse module. In terms of power, to avoid the need for an external power supply I used an LP2. ACZ- 3. 0 Voltage Regulator to convert the 5. V power provided by the USB port / FTDI cable to the 3. V needed by the module. The LP2. 95. 0ACZ- 3. A therefore I used two in parallel to provide 2. A (the Synapse RF Engine datasheet quotes a transmit current of 1. A and a receive current of 6.
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