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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

#71

Post by codazoda »

corytheboyd wrote: post #65
codazoda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised by this, but you can install a driver and simply print to these printers. Or, at least, the one I purchased is that way. You can also use lp, lpr, or nc to send text and codes to it. Mine is connected to my network via Ethernet. No RPi is required to send stuff to it from any computer on the network.

I imagine the software presented here does a lot more than proxy requests to a printer though. What sorts of payloads were you sending off to be printed? If it worked Good Enough for lightly formatted text, no-hosted is way better than self-hosted!

I was printing two things...

1. A plain text "progress report" that tells me some personal stats about my week last week.

2. Full designs created in Affinity Designer, which print with the simple "print" menu. These can have any font, graphic, or whatever.

I was able to send everything from plain text with a scroll and cut ESC/POS command on the end (my automated progress report), to an image sent directly to the printer queue, to a pixel perfect desktop design document.

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

#72

Post by lionpixel »

codazoda wrote: post #44

Inspired by other receipt printer projects on HN, I just purchased a MUNBYN P075 printer last week. I thought it was going to be a lot more complex than it was. I thought I'd have to write ESC/POS codes manually to generate images, for example. But, it's actually quite simple, since there is a printer driver. I also decided to make a text file for my daily progress report and shoot that over to the printer with `nc`.…

Great choice MUNBYN printers are awesome! Recently I found that NETUM thermal printers are even cheaper for comparable performance. :)

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

#73

Post by lionpixel »

nexus_six wrote: post #69

I'm not sure what the point of this really is. Many of those printers and POS systems have OpenCUPS support already, which is more or less "one command". If it requires a Raspberry Pi I have no idea what you are selling. Can you please elaborate on this?

Valid question. Printercow is aiming for a plug-and-play scenario where you can use whatever thermal printer you want with an extensive html-like template engine.

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

#74

Post by mrtksn »

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 specifically isn’t. It identifies itself as “MXW01” , which is different that the printers tested.

[0] https://github.com/NaitLee/Cat-Printer https://github.com/bitbank2/Print2BLE

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

#75

Post by avgDev »

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, it is an easy fire and forget.

Can this integrate with a zebra printer? Can this handle large number of prints? Serialization?

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

#76

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

lionpixel wrote: post #42
black_puppydog wrote: post #32

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?

I like this! Thanks for the feedback!

I have a home project that is actually a great fit for this, but a SaaS service would be a hard stop. Self-hosted or bust for my use case.

I mean, it would be a waste of _your_ resources to host it for my use case too!

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

#77

Post by rounce »

lionpixel wrote: post #39
rounce wrote: post #34

What's the story if you want to self-host?

Speaks nothing against this - though give it some time to leave the alpha phase. Hosting is super easy using Docker and e.g. Coolify as PaaS right now.

Is there a public repo?

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

#78

Post by jmann99999 »

black_puppydog wrote: post #32

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?

I completely agree with this.

It would be nice to try it with SAAS and then buy a local license.

It is similar to the Tydbit device [0] where you can program the device but it runs on their cloud. That is fine unless Tydbit goes out of business. That fear of loss stopped me from doing too much programming with it.

I think the same may be true here.

[0] https://tidbyt.com

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

#79

Post by KomoD »

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…

As far as I understand it:

If it supports ESC/POS commands then yes, otherwise no.

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

#80

Post by Toxygene »

Very cool. I created a thermal printer project a few years back that prints (low quality) proxies of Magic: the Gathering cards based on the rules for "Momir Basic". It was a fun project, though formatting images to work with the various ESC/POS image formats was quite a challenge.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/formats/momir-basic https://imgur.com/gallery/momir-basic-irl-g2S3hJT

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