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Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

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Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#31

Post by 0xDEADFED5 »

liminalsunset wrote: post #17
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…

Yep, as someone who has printed thousands of these damn labels in the past, this is the answer.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#32

Post by RowanH »

m463 wrote: post #14

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…

The PT-P models (we've got and a lot of our clients use the PT-P900W) - it does a very nifty "half cut" on laminated tape labels that makes it super easy to peel and stick.

Love the API it has, aside from some quirks - we can control the printer from within our Android/iOS apps - literally can tell it to half cut the labels or not.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#33

Post by kotaKat »

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…

Gonna chime in with a funny tip.

The Zebra LP2844 is a workhorse 4x6 label printer.

Zebra took the design and sells it as the "all new" ZP888 in China and other foreign markets at stupidly low costs. There are Alibaba sellers that will help you snag one back into the US for around $150-200 instead of the massive cost of Zebra's US products ;)

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#34

Post by RobotToaster »

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…

You have a point, but surely there would be no cost difference in using a newer processor that would be easier to issue firmware updates for in the future, and would be more energy efficient.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#35

Post by moogly »

liminalsunset wrote: post #17
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…

The chain printing is not so user friendly, I find; I just ended up typing out multiple labels with spaces inbetween instead, and cutting them with a pair of scissors.

This (along with the chain printing) only works when you know you have a lot of (similar) labels to print beforehand.

To me, it's also less about the cost of the wasted tape, and more about the extra litter it produces.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#36

Post by j45 »

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.

There are other Brother printers that are not tape based, which use a continuous roll of label that it cuts and much better use of material.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#37

Post by hiatus »

RobotToaster wrote: post #34
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…

You have a point, but surely there would be no cost difference in using a newer processor that would be easier to issue firmware updates for in the future, and would be more energy efficient.

> surely there would be no cost difference in using a newer processor

How did you come to this conclusion?

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#38

Post by MisterTea »

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.

The Brady I use at work is really good about not wasting tape. Of course it is not cheap but money well spent in a production environment. Their cloth tapes are awesome for wire marking.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#39

Post by kohbo »

037 wrote: post #29
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.

I have the Brother P-Touch CUBE PT-P300BT and “pwned” it (not really) some time ago. Using this code as a starting point [1], I set it up with a FastAPI backend serving an HTML+JS frontend on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. I connect to it using a browser, design the label, and it prints via Bluetooth. One of the first options I added to the interface is the “no feed” checkbox, which I use when I know I’ll print more than o…

I love this idea. It never even occurred to me to try something like this but that just makes stumbling on comments like yours even better.

Re: Pwning a Brother labelmaker, for fun and interop

#40

Post by mananaysiempre »

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…

The age of the CPU is of little consequence, except to the extent it reflects the underlying development practices. (Imagine joining a commercial project with a first release in 2020 and discovering it uses SourceSafe.) The age of software, though, is relevant, when that software is as sprawling as a Linux install.

The thing about devices with a web interface is that they will end up Internet-exposed, and the thing about weak Internet-exposed hosts is that they will be assembled into a botnet. Mirai is probably a bit atypical because surveillance cameras are perhaps more likely than others to end up exposed, but I think it’s still worth applying its lessons to other appliances as well.

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