Brother MFC-9340CDW Duplex Scanning on Ubuntu 24.04

Initial issue

I recently purchased a new computer and installed Ubuntu 24.04 on it. While everything appeared to be working correctly, I soon noticed that duplex (two sided) scanning on my Brother MFC-9340CDW printer was not working as expected. Despite having the “Both” option selected in simple-scan it only digitized a single size of each page.

Inspection

My first thought was that the jump from 22.04 to 24.04 may have resulted in some change in how my scanning software was accessing the scanner. On my 22.04 machine, I had two scanners: a “Brother MFC-9340CDW” and a “WDS Brother MFC-9340CDW”, but on my newer machine I only had the second option. After some research, I learned that my new machine is using airscan to locate its scanner, so the “WDS” variant must originate from there.

Create a fisheye horizon landscape for Stellarium

In this blog post I explain how to use your mobile phone and some cross-platform software to create a custom fisheye landscape for Stellarium. This form of landscape is exceptionally useful for planning observations from less-than-ideal observing locations. For example, I observe from my condo’s covered patio. As shown in the image below, my field of view is restricted by the patio ceiling, roof overhangs, gutters, downspouts, trees, and nearby buildings. Creating this projection map in Stellarium allows me to quickly check if a given object is observable without having to use complicated tools.