Most new printers these days offer a Wi-Fi connection, but if you have an old wired printer without Wi-Fi, you don’t have to buy a whole new printer. In this article, we’ll show you how to convert any USB printer into a wireless printer by connecting it to a router.
First of all, make sure you have installed the printer’s driver on each computer where you wish to use the printer wirelessly. You can download the driver for your printer’s model from its manufacturer’s website. For example, we have a Canon PIXMA g2010 Printer, which is a USB printer and doesn’t have any wireless functionality.
Once you have installed the driver on your computer, check your router if there is a USB port available at the back. Many routers these days come with a USB port, and such routers usually have the ability to work as wireless print servers. This means you can plug your printer into this USB port and share the printer with other devices that are connected to the router.
To connect your printer to the router, connect your printer’s cable to the USB port of the router and wait until the USB LED becomes solid on. Then, log into the router’s admin panel, go to the USB settings, and click on print server. Make sure the print server functionality is enabled. The router has detected our printer, which is attached to its USB port.
Now you need to install the printer controller utility on each computer where you want to access this printer wirelessly. You can download it from your router’s manufacturer’s website. Enter the model number of your Wi-Fi router and download the latest version of the USB printer controller utility.
After installation, launch the USB printer controller application. You can see that it has automatically listed the printer here. To connect this computer to the printer wirelessly, just right-click on it and click on connect, or you can just set it to auto-connect when your printer is online.
You can print any document to the printer wirelessly. If your printer is a multi-function printer, you can also use the printer to scan a page wirelessly. Just insert a page into the scanner, then on the USB printer controller, go to the tools tab and click on connect for scanning. Then choose the type of picture you want to scan and click the scan button. The scanned image will be saved in the picture folder.
You can also connect a mobile phone to the printer or Wi-Fi. Just install the Noco print app from the Play Store and open it. Tap on select the printer, then choose to connect to our Wi-Fi. You can now print any document from your mobile or Wi-Fi.
So, if you have a wired printer, you do not need to upgrade to a wireless model. If your router supports printer sharing, then you can easily convert any USB printer to a Wi-Fi printer and print from any wireless device.