Support for Double-Sided Scanning with an HP OfficeJet 5742

[tatzemax]

Hello,

First of all, thank you for this great project! I’m successfully using node-hp-scan-to with Docker on my QNAP to scan documents with my HP OfficeJet 5742. It works perfectly—great job!

Now, I’d like to scan double-sided documents. Since my printer doesn’t have an automatic duplex scanning feature, the original software handles this by allowing the user to reinsert the document into the feeder to scan the backside.

My questions are:

• Is there a way to manually support double-sided scanning with this project?
  

• If not, do you have any recommendations on how I could best integrate scanning the backside into the workflow?
  

Thank you in advance for your help!

[manuc66]

Hello @tatzemax

Thank you for sharing your experience and highlighting an unsupported feature.

Could you possibly create a short video demonstrating the process, along with one of your scans using the feeder and the debug output? This might provide some insights into how to make it work with those elements.

Ideally, having the network communication in clear text between the device and the computer would be helpful, although I understand that obtaining this can be challenging.

Thanks again!

[tatzemax]

Thank you for your reply! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to create a video, but I can describe the process as it works in the original HP software:1.First, the front side of the document is scanned.2.Then, the back side of the document is placed in the feeder and scanned.3.The software on the Windows PC doesn’t automatically detect the front or back sides but instead sorts the two scanned stacks (front and back sides) together to create a complete, double-sided document.The scanner itself doesn’t recognize whether it’s scanning the front or back side—this is entirely handled by the software.A practical approach for implementing this in this project could be:A menu or option where you can explicitly select “scan only back sides.”The software would then automatically insert the scanned back sides into the previous document, resulting in a correctly assembled, double-sided document.I hope this description helps.

[manuc66]

It seems that the double-sided scanning feature is activated by the software on the computer rather than directly from the printer itself. IS that correct ?

In the future, a new feature could be emulated by creating instead of one two destination entry so that would allow users to scan the front side of a document first and temporarily save those files (in temp, so not available). After that, they could initiate a second scan with the second entry for the back side, which would then trigger the printer to release the scanned document in the correct order. The initial scan would be retained until the user completes the process or starts a new front-side scan, or until a reasonable timeout occurs to accommodate any mistakes.

[tatzemax]

Good Morning,

Thank you for your detailed response! I see this as a very feasible solution and would be thrilled to see such a feature implemented in the future.

Additionally, I would like to mention that I used AI assistance to write this message, as my native language is German.

Thank you again for your support and all the effort you are putting into this project!Best regards,
Max