ix500-linux

One-button scanning workflow for Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 on Linux.

Press the scanner button → get a searchable PDF with OCR. That's it.

Features

• One-button scanning - press the hardware button, get a PDF
• Duplex A4 color - scans both sides automatically
• Smart blank detection - skips empty back pages (20% threshold)
• Auto color/grayscale - converts B&W pages to grayscale for smaller files
• OCR - searchable text with Dutch + English (configurable)
• Auto-rotate - fixes upside-down pages automatically
• Image cleanup - deskew, crop borders, remove speckles
• Aggressive compression - ~95% smaller than raw scans
• PDF/A-2b output - archival quality
• Desktop notifications - know when your scan is done
• Robust disconnect handling - no crashes when scanner is unplugged

Requirements

System packages

• sane / sane-backends - scanner driver (usually pre-installed)

Homebrew packages

brew install ocrmypdf tesseract tesseract-lang

Tesseract symlinks

Brew doesn't always link these automatically. Check if they exist and create if needed:

# Check your tesseract version
TESS_VERSION=$(brew list --versions tesseract | awk '{print $2}')

# Create symlinks if missing
ln -sf "/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/tesseract/${TESS_VERSION}/share/tessdata/eng.traineddata" /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/tessdata/
ln -sf "/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar/tesseract/${TESS_VERSION}/share/tessdata/osd.traineddata" /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/tessdata/

Installation

1. Verify scanner is detected

scanimage -L
# Should show: device `fujitsu:ScanSnap iX500:XXXXX'

2. Install scripts

# Copy scan scripts
cp scan ~/.local/bin/scan
cp scan-button-poll ~/.local/bin/scan-button-poll
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/scan ~/.local/bin/scan-button-poll

# Scripts auto-detect scanner - no manual configuration needed

3. Install systemd user service

cp scan-button.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable scan-button.service

4. Install udev rule (for auto start on USB connect)

Only neeeded if auto-detection is used.

sudo cp 99-scansnap-ix500.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

5. Start the service

systemctl --user start scan-button.service

Usage

One-button scanning

1. Put documents in the feeder
2. Press the blue Scan button on the scanner
3. Wait for desktop notification "Scan Complete"
4. Find your PDF in ~/Documents/scanner-inbox/

Manual scanning

scan                  # Auto-named: scan-YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.pdf
scan my-document      # Custom name: my-document.pdf

Check service status

systemctl --user status scan-button.service
journalctl --user -u scan-button.service -f

Configuration

Scanner options (in scan)

Option	Value	Purpose
--swskip	20%	Skip blank pages
--swcrop	yes	Auto-crop borders
--swdespeck	2	Remove small artifacts
--overscan	On	Better feed handling
--prepick	On	Pre-pick next page (faster)
--buffermode	On	Faster processing

OCR options (in scan)

Option	Value	Purpose
-l	nld+eng	Languages (Dutch + English)
--rotate-pages-threshold	2	Aggressive rotation fix
-O	3	Maximum optimization
--jpeg-quality	60	Good compression
--jbig2-lossy	yes	Better text compression

Color detection

Pages with <10% color saturation are converted to grayscale automatically.

How it works

┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│  Button     │────▶│ scan-button  │────▶│ scan script     │
│  pressed    │     │ -poll        │     │                 │
└─────────────┘     └──────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
                                                  │
                    ┌─────────────────────────────┘
                    ▼
┌─────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│  scanimage  │────▶│ ImageMagick  │────▶│ ocrmypdf        │
│  (SANE)     │     │ (combine)    │     │ (OCR + PDF)     │
└─────────────┘     └──────────────┘     └─────────────────┘
                                                  │
                                                  ▼
                                         ┌─────────────────┐
                                         │ ~/Documents/    │
                                         │ scanner-inbox/  │
                                         └─────────────────┘

1. Button poll service checks scanner button every 500ms
2. scanimage captures duplex color TIFF pages
3. ImageMagick combines pages, detects color vs grayscale
4. ocrmypdf adds OCR layer, optimizes, outputs PDF/A-2b
5. Desktop notification confirms completion

Tested on

• OS: Bluefin (Fedora Silverblue based)
• Scanner: Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500
• SANE: sane-backends with fujitsu driver

Should work on any Linux with SANE support for the iX500.

Credits

• Rida Ayed's ix500 Linux guide - scanner options and swskip threshold
• foxey/scanbdScanSnapIntegration - inspiration for button daemon
• OCRmyPDF - excellent OCR tool

License

MIT