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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

#31

Post by echoangle »

heeton wrote: post #15
echoangle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to verify that without getting a Lab to do an analysis? I'm not sure if I can trust stuff labelled BPA-Free from Amazon for example.

Buy from a reputable seller for anything important, instead of amazon. Or, there are apparently at-home testing chemicals that look simple to use. I haven't done it myself though.

The question is who is reputable. Even when buying from a well known store, I don’t know how they audit their suppliers, because the paper is bound to be made by some company I’ve never heard of.

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

#32

Post by black_puppydog »

I can see the value in this, but I don't get why it needs to be a SaaS. Don't get me wrong; a revenue stream for something this obviously useful is great! But why not just make it dual licensing; non-commercial projects get it under AGPL or some custom license that prevents them from using it commercially. Everyone else gets a bog-standard yearly license or such... Why not?

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

#35

Post by d1sxeyes »

heeton wrote: post #13
dmd wrote: post #11

> I'm particularly excited about the AI integration possibilities. Instead of yet another chat interface, you can have AI generate content that exists in the physical world – artwork, poems, todo lists, custom receipts, etc. Incredible. Instead of just creating online trash that nobody wants to read, it can create physical trash too! For maximum art, it can feed directly into a shredder.

Extremely shortsighted take. I currently use a local LLM to scan my notes, meeting transcripts, todo list and calendar. I currently have an iPad that displays some items (e.g. if I have important personal tasks to do today that I might have forgotten) and I would love it to be printed out like this. Nothing to do with generating novel text, it's just used as a flexible API to my existing text and items.

Is that handwritten notes? What LLM are you using for that and what level of accuracy do you get?

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

#37

Post by lionpixel »

xorcist wrote: post #33

> everyone gets 300 free prints per month during our beta Ah, printer drivers. One of the things we do not yet rent. Makes sense.

Not fully decided on the payment yet. Thinking about going the Coolify route with self-hosted and cloud option or with pay what you use (seems more software tending to this one). Happy for any feedback!

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

#38

Post by lnenad »

lionpixel wrote: post #22
dmd wrote: post #11

> I'm particularly excited about the AI integration possibilities. Instead of yet another chat interface, you can have AI generate content that exists in the physical world – artwork, poems, todo lists, custom receipts, etc. Incredible. Instead of just creating online trash that nobody wants to read, it can create physical trash too! For maximum art, it can feed directly into a shredder.

Totally get the resentment. However, I'm particularly excited about the benefits this could bring, especially for people like my grandma with dementia. She could say, "Print my shopping list," or "Can you write down my son's phone number?" Only thing missing for now is smarter home assistant devices as Alexa is too dumb to handle such requests. :/

It's sad how jaded hn can sometimes be. I love the idea and I think there are so many ways it could be useful.

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

#40

Post by corytheboyd »

Is there something out there like this that is self-hosted? It’s ridiculous that this isn’t, and it’s going to become a pay-per-print model?! I don’t care about the AI nonsense, it’s a printer.

I could see myself using something like this to print recipes. I’d like to avoid getting my fancy cook book dirty, but have still have recipe in the kitchen to reference. Phone works okay until you have to scroll with dirty/wet hands.

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