Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

sdomi.pl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#11

Post by parl_match »

Lammy wrote: post #9

Fun read and great debugging but I'm honestly really sick of this kind of attitude since it's essentially arguing for more churn and for more e-waste: > There's a CUPS version that's 10+ years old, Linux kernel almost old enough to drink, all of that r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ crawling on an ARMv5. > but it seems that they have one specific design and they're happy to milk it for as long and as cheap as possible Like who fucking…

> Like who fucking cares how old the CPU in a label printer is?

I don't (usually) care about the CPU, but I do care about the update story. If they are shipping a very outdated cpu design, it likely runs a kernel that no longer gets security patches.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#12

Post by parl_match »

josephcsible wrote: post #10
Lammy wrote: post #9

Fun read and great debugging but I'm honestly really sick of this kind of attitude since it's essentially arguing for more churn and for more e-waste: > There's a CUPS version that's 10+ years old, Linux kernel almost old enough to drink, all of that r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ crawling on an ARMv5. > but it seems that they have one specific design and they're happy to milk it for as long and as cheap as possible Like who fucking…

How is saying "stop manufacturing new stuff that's obsolete from day 1" advocating for e-waste?

If it's an appliance, I would hardly think it's obsolete hardware if it's performing the required task. There are other issues, of course.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#13

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dfox wrote: post #7
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #5

You're much better off getting an older TZ/TZe P-touch with a USB port from before the more recent enshittification. CUPS supports them well and there are utilities that can print images direct to them.

If you are serious about printing labels and can program you should get yourself a Zebra label printer or Intermec/Honeywell one that has ZPL emulation (these tend to be cheaper than Zebra, so near the pricing of Brother consumer stuff, but more fiddly with media alignment). ZPL is this super weird language, but after few hours you will be printing any labels you want without dealing with CUPS or its filter chains. T…

Zebra printers only print on the surface and have the usual limitations of thermal printers. P-touch TZ uses thermal transfer which enables a variety of foreground and background colors, different cover laminates, ribbons, and heatshrink tubing. The laminated tapes are printed on the back of the lamination ensuring the image can't be removed and is immune to subsequent heat or fading with age.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#14

Post by m463 »

do the the brother label printers have a backing to peel off?

I had a dymo d1 style label printer years ago and liked it, but it was a pain to get the backing to come off the labels when you wanted to stick them. (dymo labelmanager pnp)

Then I got a brother QL-1100 and it was a big step up. Labels easily come off the backing and if you want, 3rd party labels are cheap and available. I rarely pull out the dymo anymore. You can even print like from a database and it will spit out a pile of cut labels with no intervention. also linux software on github (haven't tried it)

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#15

Post by brudgers »

parl_match wrote: post #11
Lammy wrote: post #9

Fun read and great debugging but I'm honestly really sick of this kind of attitude since it's essentially arguing for more churn and for more e-waste: > There's a CUPS version that's 10+ years old, Linux kernel almost old enough to drink, all of that r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ crawling on an ARMv5. > but it seems that they have one specific design and they're happy to milk it for as long and as cheap as possible Like who fucking…

> Like who fucking cares how old the CPU in a label printer is? I don't (usually) care about the CPU, but I do care about the update story. If they are shipping a very outdated cpu design, it likely runs a kernel that no longer gets security patches.

If plausibly your label printer is an attack surface of significant consequence, a Dymo is the simplest thing that might work.

https://www.staples.com/dymo-organizer-express-pro-industria...

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#17

Post by liminalsunset »

moogly wrote: post #16

I'd like to hack my P-Touch to not waste 1" of tape every goddamn print for no discernible reason. I've read Brother's reason and I don't see it.

Well fortunately, there is a setting that you can use to do "chain printing" where if you have a number of labels to print, it simply won't cut the last one it prints, and then you can send another job to the printer and it'll cut that one out and print the next (leaving the last thing it printed uncut, if you still have the box checked).

I don't particularly doubt the waste of tape is somewhat necessary. The way TZe tape works is there's a double side sticky backing, a thin film with a coating of ink (selectively transfers, with the used tape re-rolled internally) when heated and pressed onto the sticky backing), and a clear coverlay. The problem is that because of the thickness of the cutter assembly (which is actually just a mechanized pair of scissors internally), there is about an inch of tape after the layers have been laminated, but before the tape is cut. The printer has to advance the tape to get it cut at the right place, but by the time it's gotten there, the tape now has a stub of white tape on it, which if not cut off, would get stuck to the next label.

"Chain printing" solves this problem by letting the printer delay the "advance and cut" operation until it has something to fill the otherwise wasted inch with.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#18

Post by voltagex_ »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #6
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #5

You're much better off getting an older TZ/TZe P-touch with a USB port from before the more recent enshittification. CUPS supports them well and there are utilities that can print images direct to them.

I was about to buy a D610BT or P710BT (to use on Mac) ... what enshittification should I know about?

I think the protocols for those are reasonably well understood, but e.g. you can only print via USB from a Mac, Bluetooth was only on a phone AFAICR

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#19

Post by LeifCarrotson »

josephcsible wrote: post #10
Lammy wrote: post #9

Fun read and great debugging but I'm honestly really sick of this kind of attitude since it's essentially arguing for more churn and for more e-waste: > There's a CUPS version that's 10+ years old, Linux kernel almost old enough to drink, all of that r̶u̶n̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ crawling on an ARMv5. > but it seems that they have one specific design and they're happy to milk it for as long and as cheap as possible Like who fucking…

How is saying "stop manufacturing new stuff that's obsolete from day 1" advocating for e-waste?

"Obsolete" is a word with a cultural stigma attached, which is the belief that things which are older are worse.

A label printer ought to be judged on its ability to print labels first and foremost. If it is designed such that it eventually must be discarded because it is no longer good at printing labels, that should reflect poorly on it.

My label printer sits next to my stapler. The stapler is a Swingline from the 70s, I think my parents gave it to me when I was in college? Regardless, it cannot really be considered obsolete, because it staples just as well as it did when it was made. The latest advances in technology do not make new staplers function any better. Similarly, my label printer has a qwerty keyboard and does not need to keep pace with modern wifi standards, as long as 12mm ink/label cartridges are available (and they have been the same since the 90s) and the NiMH battery can be recharged, it will work just as well as when it was new.

The smoothness of the gradient on the CUPS internal web server is so irrelevant to the merits of the label printer that it does not deserve to be mentioned. Some printers and chart plotters are very large, very expensive machines that can nonetheless function for decades, and fortunately, the CUPS project still supports them.

It's unfortunate that one of the most desirable attributes of a printer is that it supports wireless networking, and that wireless networking security standards have as much churn as they do, which causes label printers like this one to become e-waste.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#20

Post by throwup238 »

brudgers wrote: post #15
parl_match wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like who fucking cares how old the CPU in a label printer is? I don't (usually) care about the CPU, but I do care about the update story. If they are shipping a very outdated cpu design, it likely runs a kernel that no longer gets security patches.

If plausibly your label printer is an attack surface of significant consequence, a Dymo is the simplest thing that might work. https://www.staples.com/dymo-organizer-express-pro-industria...

For bonus points, it looks like a legacy Star Trek phaser or something.
Post reply on HN