Libinklevel - Check the ink level of your printer with linux

Project page Description News Printers supported Printers not supported What to do if your printer is not yet supported License Download Installation and usage Feedback

Description

Libinklevel is a library for checking the ink level of your printer on a system which runs Linux. It supports printers attached via parallel port or usb.

News

01/07/2004	Release of version 0.6.3. Support for HP Business InkJet 1100 has been fixed. Minor bugfixes have been performed. The source code has been split into several files for better maintainability and extensibility.
26/02/2004	Project moved to Sourceforge.
10/01/2004	Release of version 0.6.2. Support for HP printers has been improved: Separate cartridges for each color and addon photo cartridges are now detected.
05/12/2003	Release of version 0.6.1. A segmentation fault when the printer did not terminate its device id with a semicolon has been fixed.
03/12/2003	Release of version 0.6. Error reporting is now much more verbose. The name of the printer is returned.
14/09/2003	Release of version 0.5. Support for Epson printers has been much improved.
07/09/2003	Release of version 0.4. Now with support for Epson printers.
27/08/2003	Release of version 0.3. Now the soname of the library is correctly set up.
27/08/2003	Release of version 0.2. Now also works if you do not use devfs.
25/08/2003	Initial version released and web page set up.

Printers supported

The following printers are supported by the current version:

Epson Stylus C60
Epson Stylus C62
Epson Stylus C70
Epson Stylus C82
Epson Stylus Color 600
Epson Stylus Color 640
Epson Stylus Color 670
Epson Stylus Color 740
Epson Stylus Color 850
Epson Stylus Photo 780
Epson Stylus Photo 790
Epson Stylus Photo 810
Epson Stylus Photo 820
Epson Stylus Photo 830
Epson Stylus Photo 890
Epson Stylus Photo 915
HP Business InkJet 1100
HP DeskJet 920C
HP DeskJet 930C
HP DeskJet 940C
HP DeskJet 950C
HP DeskJet 960C
HP DeskJet 970C
HP DeskJet 980C
HP DeskJet 990C
HP DeskJet 3320 (broken in current version)
HP DeskJet 3325 (broken in current version)
HP DeskJet 3550
HP DeskJet 3650
HP DeskJet 3820
HP DeskJet 5150
HP DeskJet 5550
HP DeskJet 5650
HP DeskJet 5652
HP DeskJet 6122
HP DeskJet 9600
HP OfficeJet 4100 Series
HP OfficeJet 5100 Series
HP OfficeJet G Series
HP OfficeJet K Series
HP OfficeJet V Series
HP PhotoSmart 1000
HP PhotoSmart 1100
HP PhotoSmart 1115
HP PhotoSmart 1218
HP PhotoSmart 1315
HP PhotoSmart 7150
HP PhotoSmart 7260
HP PhotoSmart 7345
HP PhotoSmart 7350
HP PhotoSmart 7760
HP PSC 700 Series
HP PSC 900 Series
HP PSC 1200 Series
HP PSC 1315 Series
HP PSC 2110 Series
HP PSC 2150 Series
HP PSC 2175 Series
HP PSC 2200 Series
HP PSC 6100 Series

Printers not supported

The following printers cannot be supported because they do not transmit their inklevel:

HP DeskJet 540
HP DeskJet 680C
HP DeskJet 690C
HP DeskJet 840C
HP DeskJet 845C
HP DeskJet 890C
HP DeskJet 1120C
HP OfficeJet LX
HP OfficeJet Pro 1150C
HP OfficeJet Pro 1170C
HP OfficeJet Pro 1175C
HP OfficeJet R Series
HP OfficeJet Series 300
HP OfficeJet Series 500
HP OfficeJet Series 600
HP OfficeJet Series 700
HP OfficeJet T Series
HP PSC 300 Series
HP PSC 500 Series
Sony All-in-One IJP-V100

What to do if your printer is not yet supported

Support for most HP and Epson printers which transmit their ink level should now be included. Just give it a try and let me know the result so that I can add your printer to the appropiate list. Canon and Lexmark printers will be supported when I can get information on how to retrieve their inklevel. If you have information on how to retrieve the ink level of Canon or Lexmark printers, let me know.

License

This software is licensed unter the GPL. It comes with no warranty.

Download

libinklevel-0.6.3.tar.gz (sources)
libinklevel-0.6.3.prt.tar.gz (CRUX port)

Installation and usage

You need gcc installed. libieee1284 is required. You may have to edit the Makefile to suit your needs.

tar xzf libinklevel-0.6.3.tar.gz
cd libinklevel
vi Makefile
make
make install

Users of programs which make use of libinklevel need read/write permission on the device the printer is connected to. For parallel port printers this is /dev/parport[portnumber] and /dev/lp[portnumber], for usb printers this is /dev/usb/lp[portnumber].

After that install some software which makes use of libinklevel. Currently there are ink (command line), kink (KDE), inkblot (Gnome) and gmso (Gnome). If you have written some software which makes use of libinklevel, let me know so that I can add a link to it here.

Feedback

Send comments, suggestions, critics to Markus Heinz.