Sharp UXB800 Configuration Notes

For a while I used Internet based fax-services to send and receive faxes, but these solutions did not really work for me, because I don’t use faxes often enough to subscribe and pay for a monthly service. And if I ever use it, I don’t use it for just one or two pages, but often receive 48 pages or more. So paying the service 75 cents per page was not reasonable either. I was looking into fax/scanner/printer combos and modems, but none of those solutions seemed right for my case.

I knew I need my own fax-machine and I found the Sharp UXB800 fax-machine that was not only very cheap at $80, it can also receive faxes as TIFF and PDF and forward them to an email-address. Perfect for me: no paper and ink wasted.

The fax-machine has one problem, however: It doesn’t support any of the SMTP authentication methods needed to forward emails through my ISP, and there is no way to upgrade its firmware to add support. I found a workaround relaying the incoming faxes through a mail-server in my home network. This mail-server can be open for the fax-machine and be set up with the proper authentication needed for the ISP mail server.

First I used the free hMailServer for Windows, which worked very nicely and quietly as a background service. Later I decided to switch to a Ubuntu Linux based mail server running in our basement.

The following are a few (raw!) notes, originally just to myself and not really meant as a tutorial. Maybe some of these notes can be useful if you own a UXB800. If I have some time I might create a walk-through with screenshots and photos one day.

In my recent configuration I decided to give the fax-machine a static IP, but it works just as easily with DHCP.

• In your lan/dsl router, assign a name like faxmachine to a static ip-address like 192.168.1.80. This is optional, dynamically assigned ip-addresses via dhcp work as well. I found it a bit more convenient to treat the fax machine as a static device.
• In your fax machine settings, setup machine identification and network:
  Use DHCP: No
  IP Address: 192.168.1.80
  Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
  Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1
  DNS (Primary): 192.168.1.1
  DNS (Secondary): 192.168.1.1
  The settings-page can now be reached through http://faxmachine/.
• In your fax machine settings, setup email:
  SMTP Server: mymailserver
  Port number: 25
  No POP before SMTP: No
  Sender name: My Name
  Email-address: myname@mymailserver.mydomain.lan
  Email-subject: Incoming Fax
  Message: My message
  File Format: PDF
• You now need to setup a forwarding address. This cannot be done with the web-setup menu, but has to be done on the fax machine itself:
• Function/Rcv Fax to E-Mail:
  Act. Rcv Fax To Mail: 1 YES
  Print received fax: 2 NO
  Report Setting: 1 Print Error Only
  Forwarding Address: 2 CLEAR
  Forewarding Addr. Clr: 01 START
  Forewarding Addr. Clr: STOP
  Forwarding Address: 1 SET
  Forwarding Addr. Set: 01
  Forwarding Addr #01: START for all
  Email # Mode: myname@myserver.mydomain.lan START STOP STOP
• In your web-setup, add the email to the destination management page:
  Destination Name: My Name / Rapid 01
  E-mail Address: myname@myserver.mydomain.lan

Notes

If I remember right, the mail server worked pretty much out of the box in Ubuntu. On Windows I set up hMailServer as the following before:

• Installed hMailServer and chose external MySQL database to link to my local server instance.
• Database name: hmailserver
• Domain/General/Domain name:
  mydomain.lan & default-settings
• Domain/General/Add account:
  myname@mydomain.lan & default-settings
• Settings/Protocols: POP and SMTP
• Settings/Protocols/SMTP/Delivery of email:
  Hostname: mymailserver
  SMTP relayer: mail.myisp.domain
  Port: 25
  Server requires authentication
  Username/Password
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Add LAN:
  Priority: 25
  192.168.1.15 - 192.168.1.47
  Allow connections: SMTP
  Allow deliveries from: Local to Local, Local to external, External to external
  Other: Forwarding relay
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Edit My Computer:
  Priority: 15
  127.0.0.1 - 127.0.0.1
  Allow connections: SMTP, POP
  Allow deliveries from: all
  Other: Spam protection
• Settings/Advanced/IP Ranges/Edit Internet:
  Priority: 10
  0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255
  Allow connections: none
  Allow deliveries from: none
  Require authentication: all
  Other: Spam protection

I hope these notes could at least give an idea how to make this fax-machine work. These instructions will probably vary from one network or computer configuration to another.