Getting my brother MFC-J825DW working as a network scanner

Question

I've been attempting to set up my new brother multi-function device to work as a printer and scanner using the following steps. It is connected to the network as a LAN device, not directly connected to my ubuntu machine.

1. Search Brother support for the MFC-J825DW and download the deb packages for the lpr driver and cupswrapper drivers.
2. Follow install instructions for each driver, making sure you have all required packages installed (ia32-libs or lib32stdc++ if using 64bit ubuntu for example).

After this point I was able to successfully perform a test print, so the printer part is working. So far I haven't had much luck getting the scanner working. This is what I've tried:

1. Download the brscan4 and scan-key-tool deb packages from brother support as above.
2. Followed the instructions for installing these ensure you have all requried packages installed (such as sane-utils).

However when I tried to scan it detects no scanner.

I then tried the solution offered in this answer to a question based on a similar brother printer, but no luck. I must have made a mistake somewhere along the line. Does anyone have any ideas what I can try to find out what? Or should I uninstall everything and start again from the beginning?

Solution

Updated answer for January 2019

There is a new single deb installer package on the Brother website that installs both printer and scanner drivers. This makes installation much easier.

1. Download the 'Driver install tool`.
2. Open bash terminal and navigate to download folder.

3. Unzip the file...

   gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.1-1.gz
   

(version number will probably change, so watch for that).

4. Change to superuser or use sudo for the following commands:

   bash linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-* MFC-J825DW
   

5. Agree to prompts and select to use ip address (11 or I when I did it) , then enter the printers ip address when prompted. You can find the address on the printers touch screen display from the 'network' menu if you don't know it.

---

Old answer, which concerned what to do if you entered the wrong IP address, however it is probably outdated and I suggest trying to rerun the Driver install tool and re-entering the ip address again when prompted.

I think this is a case of only being stuck until you ask for help. Soon after posting this I decided to check the ip addesses of the printer and scanner. Sure enough I'd entered a different ip for each one somehow. Since the printer worked and the scanner didn't, I made the assumption that the scanner had the wrong one.

To correct this I had to enter the following line at the command prompt:

brsaneconfig4 -r SCANNER

This command removed the scanner with the incorrect ip address. Then I simply added it back again, making sure the ip address was right this time.

brsaneconfig4 -a name=SCANNER model=MFC-J825DW ip=192.168.3.3

Note: You should probably set the scanner up to a fixed ip in the router, otherwise you may have problems later on when it gets assigned a different ip when the router is reset.

Comments

[Admin]

Did you copy the libs: askubuntu.com/a/81078/3940

[Admin]

@Takkat I shouldn't need to do that as I'm not on a 64bit machine as far as I'm aware.

[Admin]

@Takkat Thanks for that hint, made my MFC-465CN get recognized as a scanner! Should be the answer to the problem.

[Admin]

@rearlight: well, it already is an answer on the site - glad it helped.

[Hatem Jaber]

AntonChanning solution worked for the MFC-J870DW also

[AntonChanning]

@Hatem I suspect this solution works for all models of Brother scanners supported by brsaneconfig4.