8 ms·

WiFi-enable USB printers with a Raspberry Pi and share it over your network

40 points by willswire 6y ago

xupybd 6y ago
Cool idea I'd do it for the fun of it but my last wifi printer was $80NZD a Pi would cost me over $50NZD. I'm not sure this makes any economic sense. Not that fun projects need to.
- dylz 6y ago
  CUPS runs on nearly anything, a Zero W is <$10 and a Pi 1 is $5-15 here. I think it's not so much for when you're specifically wanting to buy a non-networked printer, just stuff laying around.
- harha 6y ago
  It might be nice to have a printer that doesn’t call home or an order one that is easier to refill. Also with the cheaper pi zero, why waste a functioning printer - you might also have other services running on the Raspberry pi.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Ya, I have used a setup like this for an older thermal label printer. You can buy a good used zebra label printer for $75 on eBay where a more modern wifi enabled version would cost several hundred dollars.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Openwrt routers can do that too. Some are pretty cheap like the so called “mini travel routers” that many brands sell
ay 6y ago
The article maybe should explain why not just apt-get install cups and wifi-share the USB printer (AirPrint included) without the need for downloads from github or an account somewhere which presumably can get a copy of your every page. I did exactly that at home, and also installed a second printer driver which prints into a PDF file, piled into a HTTP-served directory, so I can easily “print” stuff from my iPhone to reference later or to send to a friend, without any paper. Very happy with the results. Raspberry Pi Zero W (10 euro IIRC). Drawback: it’s not very fast.
- harha 6y ago
  One advantage of Balena seems to be that the logs in the cloud reduce wear on the sd card, so you can just unplug the raspberry pi (I can’t find the source right now - I think it was in the issues of balena sound’s GitHub Page)
  - nemosaltat 6y ago
    I discovered this feature on an older phone with force press. The new iPhones (and iPads) don’t support fierce press, so I spent several seconds pawing at my phone trying to recreate the behavior.
  - garaetjjte 6y ago
    Why you would need persistent logs for printer? I use Alpine with CUPS and splix installed in "diskless" mode.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  When you go to print something on your iPhone and you are presented with the thumbnail of the first page (the iOS equivalent of the print dialog), two-finger pinch to zoom in on that thumbnail. You will be presented with a PDF of the output, with a share button in the corner to shoot the PDF wherever you'd like. Most useful ultra-hidden feature ever.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  This is much more difficult than most people can handle. The point of this project is you just select the items you need and it builds the distribution for you with everything included.
gen3 6y ago
Interesting project. I did something similar with a raspberry Pi I had laying around and a receipt printer. I installed the serial print driver, then just apt installed the avahi and cups daemons. It was then accessible to everything else on my network. I later made a nice little web UI that allowed you to write (or upload) whatever and get it printed. (Along with a messaging bot that allowed you to send it anything cups will ingest like .png or .pdfs or raw text. It was a fun little project that also let me print files to my real printer when I wasn’t even home!).
mastrsushi 6y ago
How long does this OS take to boot? This seems like a way too simple task for a Linux equipped Raspberry Pi.
- bjoli 6y ago
  People are really bad at gouging exactly how powerful an rpi is. I have met people that bought several to do a lot of things that would barely put any stress on a raspberry pi 3. I have a rpi4 4gb that acts as a torrent box, a unifi controller, IRC machine, print server and a music player. I just put an aluminium pipe filled with copper coins on the CPU. The thermal mass and extra heat dissipation area makes sure it rarely goes over 50c. Most of the time (98%?) the workload is just barely discernable from idle.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  You can run it on a pi 0w which run around $10-$15
loa_in_ 6y ago
There's already a good solution to this: usbip is supported in all major Linux kernels and has drivers for Windows as well. The source code of usbip was merged into the staging tree, and finally has been moved to the mainline since Linux-3.17. For Windows, the precompiled client-side program is available from the project page. You need a Linux machine (could be raspberry pi) for the server side. Link: http://usbip.sourceforge.net/ http://usbip.sourceforge.net/
- franga2000 6y ago
  USBIP, while awesome, is not the right tool for the job here. Network printing is 100% standardised, supported on all (including mobile) platforms and comes with features that a virtual USB cable just can't provide: multi-user access, fire-and-forget jobs, server-side presets, proper handling of latency, etc.
- fulafel 6y ago
  How is tje security situation? This post from few years paints a sad picture: https://sourceforge.net/p/usbip/mailman/message/35003716/ https://sourceforge.net/p/usbip/mailman/message/35003716/
  - loa_in_ 6y ago
    I would tunnel the connection through SSH, which if is good for X sessions (and their keystrokes) I believe is good enough for this
econcon 6y ago
I've Samsung SCX 3201G bought 6 years ago and still running on the starter toner cartridge, I've printed 739 pages so far with it as per the statistic. Printer was $180 and new cartridge on HPs website is listed for $85 for standard cartridge with 1500 prints. There are $10 Chinese cartridge available for same printer What do you guys recommend? I am already using it with Pi+Cups. Well the printing issues started appearing when I noticed my pages in printer had a lot of dust, I've no idea of its dust which killed my print quality or 70% used cartridge.

40 points by willswire 6y ago

Cool idea I'd do it for the fun of it but my last wifi printer was $80NZD a Pi would cost me over $50NZD. I'm not sure this makes any economic sense. Not that fun projects need to.

dylz 6y ago
CUPS runs on nearly anything, a Zero W is <$10 and a Pi 1 is $5-15 here. I think it's not so much for when you're specifically wanting to buy a non-networked printer, just stuff laying around.
harha 6y ago
It might be nice to have a printer that doesn’t call home or an order one that is easier to refill. Also with the cheaper pi zero, why waste a functioning printer - you might also have other services running on the Raspberry pi.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Ya, I have used a setup like this for an older thermal label printer. You can buy a good used zebra label printer for $75 on eBay where a more modern wifi enabled version would cost several hundred dollars.
ornornor 6y ago
Openwrt routers can do that too. Some are pretty cheap like the so called “mini travel routers” that many brands sell

ay 6y ago

The article maybe should explain why not just apt-get install cups and wifi-share the USB printer (AirPrint included) without the need for downloads from github or an account somewhere which presumably can get a copy of your every page. I did exactly that at home, and also installed a second printer driver which prints into a PDF file, piled into a HTTP-served directory, so I can easily “print” stuff from my iPhone to reference later or to send to a friend, without any paper. Very happy with the results. Raspberry Pi Zero W (10 euro IIRC). Drawback: it’s not very fast.

harha 6y ago
One advantage of Balena seems to be that the logs in the cloud reduce wear on the sd card, so you can just unplug the raspberry pi (I can’t find the source right now - I think it was in the issues of balena sound’s GitHub Page)
- nemosaltat 6y ago
  I discovered this feature on an older phone with force press. The new iPhones (and iPads) don’t support fierce press, so I spent several seconds pawing at my phone trying to recreate the behavior.
- garaetjjte 6y ago
  Why you would need persistent logs for printer? I use Alpine with CUPS and splix installed in "diskless" mode.
ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
When you go to print something on your iPhone and you are presented with the thumbnail of the first page (the iOS equivalent of the print dialog), two-finger pinch to zoom in on that thumbnail. You will be presented with a PDF of the output, with a share button in the corner to shoot the PDF wherever you'd like. Most useful ultra-hidden feature ever.
tinus_hn 6y ago
This is much more difficult than most people can handle. The point of this project is you just select the items you need and it builds the distribution for you with everything included.

gen3 6y ago

Interesting project. I did something similar with a raspberry Pi I had laying around and a receipt printer. I installed the serial print driver, then just apt installed the avahi and cups daemons. It was then accessible to everything else on my network. I later made a nice little web UI that allowed you to write (or upload) whatever and get it printed. (Along with a messaging bot that allowed you to send it anything cups will ingest like .png or .pdfs or raw text. It was a fun little project that also let me print files to my real printer when I wasn’t even home!).

mastrsushi 6y ago

How long does this OS take to boot? This seems like a way too simple task for a Linux equipped Raspberry Pi.

bjoli 6y ago
People are really bad at gouging exactly how powerful an rpi is. I have met people that bought several to do a lot of things that would barely put any stress on a raspberry pi 3. I have a rpi4 4gb that acts as a torrent box, a unifi controller, IRC machine, print server and a music player. I just put an aluminium pipe filled with copper coins on the CPU. The thermal mass and extra heat dissipation area makes sure it rarely goes over 50c. Most of the time (98%?) the workload is just barely discernable from idle.
jjeaff 6y ago
You can run it on a pi 0w which run around $10-$15

loa_in_ 6y ago

There's already a good solution to this: usbip is supported in all major Linux kernels and has drivers for Windows as well. The source code of usbip was merged into the staging tree, and finally has been moved to the mainline since Linux-3.17. For Windows, the precompiled client-side program is available from the project page. You need a Linux machine (could be raspberry pi) for the server side. Link: http://usbip.sourceforge.net/ http://usbip.sourceforge.net/

franga2000 6y ago
USBIP, while awesome, is not the right tool for the job here. Network printing is 100% standardised, supported on all (including mobile) platforms and comes with features that a virtual USB cable just can't provide: multi-user access, fire-and-forget jobs, server-side presets, proper handling of latency, etc.
fulafel 6y ago
How is tje security situation? This post from few years paints a sad picture: https://sourceforge.net/p/usbip/mailman/message/35003716/ https://sourceforge.net/p/usbip/mailman/message/35003716/
- loa_in_ 6y ago
  I would tunnel the connection through SSH, which if is good for X sessions (and their keystrokes) I believe is good enough for this

econcon 6y ago

I've Samsung SCX 3201G bought 6 years ago and still running on the starter toner cartridge, I've printed 739 pages so far with it as per the statistic. Printer was $180 and new cartridge on HPs website is listed for $85 for standard cartridge with 1500 prints. There are $10 Chinese cartridge available for same printer What do you guys recommend? I am already using it with Pi+Cups. Well the printing issues started appearing when I noticed my pages in printer had a lot of dust, I've no idea of its dust which killed my print quality or 70% used cartridge.