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Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

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Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#101

Post by lionpixel »

freedomben wrote: post #89

This is a great idea, and it looks like you've done a great job! I share your enthusiasm for these printers. I have a Rongta receipt printer sitting on my desk that I like to play with :-) I have a business usecase for something like this (now that Chrome doesn't allow printing to ESC/POS), and exposing the printer interface as an HTTP API is a clever and great solution! But, sending the data through a third party is…

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you sharing your perspective, especially about the compliance requirements. You're right, and you're not alone - many others in the thread have expressed similar concerns about the SaaS approach. After taking some time to reflect, I've decided to pivot towards a dual-track solution:

1. A free, self-hostable version for businesses with compliance requirements or those who prefer to maintain their own infrastructure 2. A cloud version for users who want a managed solution

I'll be working on both versions over the next few weeks. :)

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#102

Post by lionpixel »

avgDev wrote: post #75

Interesting project. I am assuming this is not geared towards business clients who print thousands of labels a day, but more of a fun things to print to thermal printers for individuals? Correct me if I am wrong. I like the twitch stream, fun approach. I've wrote quite a few labels in ZPL, which is used for Zebra printers. The reason I've used ZPL code is that serialization happens on the printer itself. Therefore, i…

I am using Printercow for another project of mine where I developed a POS-system where many thousands receipts need to be printed. This was one of the motivations. AI was kind of a afterthought. :P

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#103

Post by gurveer_singh29 »

I work with restaurants— i think this could be quite usefull for them and for our product.

Do you have an email i can reach out on, ideally would like to have a quick chat. The sooner the better. I think i have some people who could use this right now

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#105

Post by CraigRood »

RileyJames wrote: post #104

I know nothing about thermal printing. Does it cost more to print more black? Or is the cost of printing baked into the paper? In standard printing white is free. Is the opposite (or cost neutral) true for thermal printing?

From my limited experience working as systems for a large retailer. Thermal paper is more expensive, but the printers are cheaper and more reliable. It's not massive - I would estimate about ~20% difference - of course this can depend on print counts. Having printers down can have a much larger operational impact than the difference between types.

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#106

Post by freedomben »

lionpixel wrote: post #101
freedomben wrote: post #89

This is a great idea, and it looks like you've done a great job! I share your enthusiasm for these printers. I have a Rongta receipt printer sitting on my desk that I like to play with :-) I have a business usecase for something like this (now that Chrome doesn't allow printing to ESC/POS), and exposing the printer interface as an HTTP API is a clever and great solution! But, sending the data through a third party is…

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you sharing your perspective, especially about the compliance requirements. You're right, and you're not alone - many others in the thread have expressed similar concerns about the SaaS approach. After taking some time to reflect, I've decided to pivot towards a dual-track solution: 1. A free, self-hostable version for businesses with compliance requirements or…

That's great news! Seriously, kudos to you for taking such feedback so constructively. I do really think this could be a great path for you. Particularly once the core product is giong, you could look into add SSO, RBAC, and other enterprise-y management features and have a legit open product that makes money selling managed/hosted services to corps. This is niche enough yet common enough that I could see it being very attractive to people building higher level products!

Let me know if I can be of help. I've got quite a bit of devops/infra experience especially containers and kubernetes, as well as mostly backend dev (though enough frontend to be considered "full stack" by many, but IMHO I'm not great at frontend). Very happy to help consult!

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#107

Post by mrtksn »

namero999 wrote: post #81
mrtksn wrote: post #74

Okay, the question is: Can it print with a Cat Printer? You know, the cheap toy-like printers? Like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Portable-Instant-Bluetooth-Wireless... I was trying to hack mine to use it with an app I want to create for personal use. Currently only prints using the official Fun Print app over a bluetooth connection. There are projects[0]that are supposed to work with a cat printer but mine specific…

Funny, just today I finished reversing a similar toy printer, the "bear" printer, not the "cat" one, and writing a driver/library for it in Rust just for the sake of finally learning a bit of it. Looking at the code you shared, it seems like the cat has quite a different protocol than the bear. The opcodes seem different, and there seems to be some sort of crc happening that is completely absent in the bear. So I dou…

I managed to get it going through inspecting the bluetooth packages, now building my app for it. Couldn't get the correct image output yet but it appears to be simple, just have to send the image line by line

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#108

Post by mike_d »

lionpixel wrote: post #101
freedomben wrote: post #89

This is a great idea, and it looks like you've done a great job! I share your enthusiasm for these printers. I have a Rongta receipt printer sitting on my desk that I like to play with :-) I have a business usecase for something like this (now that Chrome doesn't allow printing to ESC/POS), and exposing the printer interface as an HTTP API is a clever and great solution! But, sending the data through a third party is…

Thank you for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you sharing your perspective, especially about the compliance requirements. You're right, and you're not alone - many others in the thread have expressed similar concerns about the SaaS approach. After taking some time to reflect, I've decided to pivot towards a dual-track solution: 1. A free, self-hostable version for businesses with compliance requirements or…

Since this is basically just a thin wrapper around node-thermal-printer, how much of your SaaS revenue is going back to the author of that project?

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#109

Post by sleepybrett »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #70

Reminds me of BERG's Little Printer (2012). Someone updated the software stack for em! Nice app, great system, lots of sweet social features & good tools. Alas it seems built around a specific thermal printer, isn't generic. https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters https://github.com/nordprojects/sirius?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/nordprojects/littleprinters-ios-app

berg didn't charge for use, just for the printer.. of course they also didn't last long.

Re: Show HN: Printercow – Turn any thermal printer into an API endpoint

#110

Post by namero999 »

mrtksn wrote: post #107
namero999 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, just today I finished reversing a similar toy printer, the "bear" printer, not the "cat" one, and writing a driver/library for it in Rust just for the sake of finally learning a bit of it. Looking at the code you shared, it seems like the cat has quite a different protocol than the bear. The opcodes seem different, and there seems to be some sort of crc happening that is completely absent in the bear. So I dou…

I managed to get it going through inspecting the bluetooth packages, now building my app for it. Couldn't get the correct image output yet but it appears to be simple, just have to send the image line by line

Most likely the logic is at least similar. Yes, line by line, each line is encoded in bytes where each bit is a pixel. I had to "invert" the image as the printer will print the "white" pixels (those with a value >0).

The printer has an internal buffer so you can send multiple lines at the same time, but on the bear this starts to break down after 200 lines or so (consider that the bear has a higher 300 dpi resolution, so 576 pixel per line). Also pay attention to overheating, I put 1 or 2 seconds of pause every 400 lines just in case.

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