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I invited strangers to message me through a receipt printer
- ge96 1y agoI wonder if you can see what was sent by others
- aschmelyun 1y agoThey’re being stored redundantly on a sqlite db. I’ll think about adding some kind of feed to the page if others are interested. I don’t know, I kind of like having a place for some people to anonymously vent (as more than a few have).
- xandrius 1y agoI'd love to see others!
- toomuchtodo 1y agoConsider a checkbox whether to be anonymous, which you can filter the feed with.
- bstsb 1y agosaw this project on TikTok when it went viral, love both the concept and implementation. the creator could easily overengineer something simple like this, but looks like the Pi stands up well with high load. the only problem i had with the site itself was actually accessing it - TikTok doesn't "do" links so i kept having to check if i'd spelt their name right!
- ben-gy 1y agoThat’s awesome - I did a similar thing recently by replacing my sticky notes with receipts - https://github.com/ben-gy/thermalnotes https://github.com/ben-gy/thermalnotes
- toomuchtodo 1y agoI love all of the HN receipt printer posts, keep them coming please. There is something delightful in this analog experience. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=receipt%20printer&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (if you build yourself, source non-phenol [made without BPA/BPS] thermal paper rolls)
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoYes, the use case of receipt printers is really intriguing .. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45698598) .. I find myself wondering what other simple micro-printing things might be worth the effort. The offline nature, the anonymity of the reader - this makes it an appealing media, suddenly, in the storm of digital life. In my case, I will probably try to use my receipt printer as a zine production line. The nature of the format inspires some great article writing ..
- toomuchtodo 1y agoSomething to note is the impermanence of the final product, as thermal paper does not have longevity (only ~1 year). I have not found a similar solution (printer + media with a similar form factor) where the print lasts longer, so open to suggestions for such use cases. I suppose in the short term, including a QR code in the print job that links to a perma/deep link online might work from a publishing perspective for bookmarking purposes.
- derwiki 1y agoI really have fallen for impermanent art. I display slide/color positive film on my windows. Yup they will fade and that’s totally ok.
- NemoNobody 1y agoHuh, that's very interesting. I've always considered Art to be timeless, bc it is, all of it. Davinci did a lot of cool stuff but the Mona Lisa made him the most famous person and I really don't see that changing. I have a painting hanging over my head rn whose artist died in the 1680s - the painting is over 100 years older than the Declaration of Independence and was brought over here on a ship with sails that took forever. Impermanent art. That just bothers me. An artist that dedicates their life to such a thing is like swimming in the fountain of youth without ever taking a drink.
- b0rbb 1y agoThere was a REALLY cool project by the design firm Berg in the UK about ~13 years ago. Cute little thermal printer with online services that allowed you to have scheduled printouts of things like weather reports, horoscopes, etc. And... oh my goodness, I was looking for pictures of it and it turns out some kind person decided to put work in on having a way to do onprem services for it! [Check it out here](https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/ https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/)
- aosaigh 1y agoI remember wanting the Berg printer but it was crazy expensive
- fragmede 1y agoYeah we unfortunately are spoiled with mass manufacturing. If they'd been popular enough for them to make a million Berg printers, the price would have been more in line with what we expect.
- dylan604 1y agoI know someone that this would be perfect for, but sadly too niche to have survived. It's a neat idea being able to get little "tickets" for various daily tasks for those that do better with those types of things compared to using a digital calendar
- xp84 11mo agoIn the related world of task management at work, this reminds me of Walt Disney World’s “Cast Deployment System.” 20 years ago, it worked entirely on desktop PCs connected to standard thermal receipt printers. It would print and cut a little slip when you clocked in, showing you who to bump and where, and you’d hand the slip to them, because it also had printed where that person should go (their break timing, or to return to PC themselves). If they didn’t need you to assume a position just yet, it would give you a task to perform - e.g. “straighten plush in Store X until 9:08” or “sweep floor in Store Y until 9:10” - thus ensuring certain tasks got done on a regular basis without it being something a manager would have to constantly monitor. All of this was like science fiction to me in those days compared to anything else I’d witnessed in the entry-level service sector. Note: no idea how it has evolved over the years but I’m sure “something something app” sums it up
- foresto 1y agoI wonder if the author is aware of the health effects of handling thermal paper. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
- hagbard_c 1y agoI suspect the author, like nearly all of us here will get more exposure to BPA from handling supermarket (etc.) receipts than from this gimmick.
- SoftTalker 1y agoI typically decline those. Thermal paper was widely used for fax machines and portable printers years back as well.
- aschmelyun 1y agoWorse: I worked in grocery stores for years as a cashier lol
- ryukoposting 1y agoI'm pretty sure I ate some as a bet in high school.
- SoftTalker 1y agoI did too but the printers were still dot matrix with ink ribbons then.
- Wistar 11mo agoI rarely see thermal printers at grocery checkouts. Almost all that I see are ink.
- xp84 11mo agoWhat country is this? I haven’t seen a dot matrix printer at a store in a decade. Fun fact: when Apple first opened retail stores, they printed receipts on big Lexmark laser printers, 8.5x11, on VERY nice paper, like resume paper, it was absurd how nice and thick the paper was. It was preprinted with return policies etc on the back (and maybe a color Apple on the front?) It only lasted a few years like that and they eventually got cheap thermal printers installed.
- odysseus 1y agoAnyone know where you can buy the wall map shown on the page?
- jer0me 1y agoIt looks like this one from National Geographic: https://www.natgeomaps.com/re-world-decorator https://www.natgeomaps.com/re-world-decorator
- qwertox 1y agoThat is a good map. So many recognizable names. Not that I'd recognize many, but those which I've searched for, they were present.
- aschmelyun 1y agoThat’s the one! Got it from a local B+N.
- bigbuppo 1y agoI did that once. Spammers found it within 15 minutes.
- whynotminot 1y agoWere you getting random text? Or actual targeted spam? For some reason I find it really funny to potentially be getting printed out adverts for shady boner pills or singles near you.
- bigbuppo 11mo agoIt wasn't targeted. Mostly they were trying to exploit confirmation/bounceback spam as the form accepted an email address. The spammers never got beyond probing the system. I would get one or two messages at a time. They realized it wasn't actually sending email out and then go elsewhere until the next spammer came along. The system didn't actually mail anything. It dropped it into a rabbitmq broker running at the colo, which then shoveled that back to the house where it eventually printed on a dot matrix printer. Originally planned to use a proper teleprinter, except mine is designed to sit in the the cramped racks of missile silos, so it has a rather obnoxious fan in it. It's also fully electronic and uses a dot matrix mechanism rather than something more fun. It's only redeeming quality is the VFD for message composition.
- ok_dad 1y agoThis is really cool! I sent you an (hopefully) uplifting message for the week’s end. I know I shouldn’t but I really want to buy a receipt printer now!
- derwiki 1y agoThey are well within the impulse buy zone, and it’s really easy to programmatically use with Python. Do it!
- MomsAVoxell 1y agoI have a clockworkPi dev console which has the built-in printer, and it has always been a 'quaint' accessory, but lately I have been looking at it with glee and wondering what strange and fruitful things I could do with it .. the first is of course a zine, for which it is the perfect printing device .. just carry it with me, print out this months issue, stable the whole sizzle together and duct-tape it in some random loo somewhere, as deserves all good zine format .. So, yeah, there could also be a window of opportunity by which other readers of the zine could send their own message to be included in the distribution channel (i.e. the bog roll) and things could propagate. Well, I guess the point is, that suddenly I think that receipt printers are really the only printer I want to deal with, ultimately. I've gotta stock up on rolls.
- codazoda 1y agoI love zine’s. There are tens of us. :)
- James_K 1y agoHis printer prolly blowing up right now.
- qwertox 1y agoWasn't there someone who had printers connected to the internet and a live video stream of the printers printing the messages?
- brightbeige 1y agoThis one? https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/the-making-of-a-dumpster-fire/ https://signalvnoise.com/svn3/the-making-of-a-dumpster-fire/
- wonger_ 1y agoGood Enough did something similar: https://guestbook.goodenough.us/ https://guestbook.goodenough.us/
- joshu 1y agoreceipt printers are a blast. at one point i was livestreaming chatgpt talking to humans via a printer: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr04ofLsxtl/ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr04ofLsxtl/ at the time, the openai API and the printer max speed capped out at roughly the same time and would use up an entire roll in ~ 10 minutes. if you didn't wind the paper back up it would fill a whole garbage bag.
- intheitmines 1y agoIf you do this be sure to buy BPA free receipt paper Handling receipt paper is what turned out to be the cause of the high BPA numbers when boba tea was tested https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1899641377002025252 https://x.com/natfriedman/status/1899641377002025252
- aschmelyun 1y agoI did! I also use gloves when handling a large amount of the receipts. I worked as a cashier for years in my teens and twenties though, so it’s probably already in my blood.
- thousand_nights 1y agothis one time when i was young and dumb and into smoking weed, i remember running out of rolling paper so i rolled a joint using a supermarket receipt i had and smoked it this was like 20 years ago, still makes me shudder after i learned about the BPA stuff
- cluckindan 1y agoFun fact, that extremely thin paper used in bibles is usually hemp paper.
- vscode-rest 1y agoGenesis 1:29, anyone?
- why_at 1y agoI'm surprised they didn't mention anything about preventing spam. The biggest thing that deters me from doing something like this is the idea that not long after I opened it up it would get hammered by bots so much that it would make the whole thing unusable.
- aschmelyun 1y agoHey it’s me, the author! That was intentional as I honestly enjoy the trolling. There’s a basic rate limiter set up to prevent misuse, and a character limit, but beyond that I just kind of wanted to see what people would send. It’s been surprisingly chill, and I’ve only had to handle a few nonsensical text dumps or garbage messages.
- codazoda 1y agoHow does the rate limiter work? IP? Maybe tangential, but I just added a little 3-second delay to my stats counter. I’ll find out if that worked for the specific bots I’m trying to avoid in a couple days. I might have to do this with my printer the Raspberry Pi 400 in my bedroom.
- Animats 1y agoSomebody did that back in the 1980s. They put a small printer into a phone that had the same form factor as a Western Electric model 500.[1] This connected to a PBX and printed "While you were out" slips. It was a real product, but did not catch on. Anyone remember that thing? I saw ads, but never one in person. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
- aschmelyun 1y agoI have a rotary phone, a voip adapter, and have been writing a local SIP server for another experiment. I am insanely tempted to replicate this.
- kristopolous 1y agoI've fantasized about fax phone banks for artists to send things out periodically. The idea of a machine unexpectedly popping out a sheet of paper has gone from "this is all spam" to delightful again. Physical items in a physical space whereby you call a place and not a person. We've digitally moved from spaces to individuals and I think that's the main critique of the modern web: somehow networked ourselves but abandoned the networking of ourselves. You could even do it all digitally somehow and just hook it up to a modern network printer. Whitelisted senders get printed while unrecognized ones enter a digital backlog. The real desire is to explore the psuedo anonymous nature of the early web in a way that is robust to abuse.
- wholinator2 1y agoI think the key point that would make this delightful is the whitelist. Lord knows the moment its opened up it'll be spammed with the worst things bored teenagers can find.
- ianbicking 1y agoI have wanted to do experiments with a receipt printer hooked up to a Raspberry Pi, with some simple controls... but every time I look up the cost of the printer I balk. It's probably not fair, but I guess in my head it feels like they should be cheaper. Or at least the cost then makes me question how much time I'm really ready to put into stuff like debugging the printer drivers and putting together a case, etc etc. The thing I actually want to play with is probably some kind of board game that incorporates the printer... ideally with bar/QR codes so the computer can print out money, IOUs, instructions, etc., and have this computer mediation that still gives people physical items to manipulate.
- aschmelyun 1y agoWhile not an outright solution to the fact that they _are_ expensive, if you don't care about them being second hand or a little older you can score a pretty good deal on sites like eBay. For instance, TM-T88V printers can do more but cost around 3x as much as the one I got, a TM-T88IV which is the older version. Not perfect, but beats the like $200 price tag brand new.
- derwiki 1y agoYou can pick up a Rongta for $75 brand new
- 7839284023 1y agoI recently bought a thermal ESC/POS printer for 25 Euros on Aliexpress but I saw the sames ones for 30 Euro on Amazon. I connected it to my linux server and without any drivers I can print with e.g.: `echo "Hello World!" >> /dev/usb/lp0`. It also supports bar/QR codes.
- leobg 1y agoYou have a make/model/link?
- 7839284023 1y agoSure: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006625823799.html https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005006625823799.html
- ValdikSS 1y agoI wrote a CUPS (Linux) printer driver for Xiqi cheap ($10) Chinese label printers if anyone interested https://github.com/ValdikSS/printer-driver-funnyprint https://github.com/ValdikSS/printer-driver-funnyprint I use it to print barcodes, and it's very handy compared to serious enterprise printers: it's lightweight, battery-powered, and works over Bluetooth.
- demetrius 1y agoRussian writer Leonid Kaganov had this idea back in 2021, with an added twist that he also put the printer in his bathroom: https://lleo.me/dnevnik/2021/11/30 https://lleo.me/dnevnik/2021/11/30
- hshdhdhehd 1y agoDoesn't know his 3 shells
- kleinishere 1y agoFor the many posters recommending BPA free paper - does anyone have suggestions / a link for a reliable seller? I looked on Amazon after another receipt printer post on HN but couldn’t find anything that provided confidence in the BPA characterization. ULINE is quantities are absurd for personal use. Imagine their most be a decent alternative but never see any named.
- toomuchtodo 1y agohttps://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-thermal-paper https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-... (scroll to "Use alternative receipt paper": "Companies that offer phenol-free alternatives")
- kleinishere 1y agoPhenomenal. Thank you.
- fukka42 1y ago(US-only)
- toomuchtodo 1y agoWhere do you need it outside the US? I will attempt to source.
- vayup 1y agoI read the title as "massage me", and was very confused for a few seconds.
- jader201 1y agoGlad I wasn’t the only one. But knowing the things that pop up on HN, something like remotely massaging someone via a receipt printer is totally believable. I’m actually hoping someone reads this and creates a remote massaging receipt printer.
- maxrev17 1y agoWe did this at uni - hpmprinter on twitter and it was on GitHub as twinter :)
- maxrev17 1y agohttps://github.com/revitteth/twinter https://github.com/revitteth/twinter
- DrawTR 1y agoI've wanted to make a project w/ a receipt printer for a little bit now. Does anyone have any good suggestions for printer models?
- liqilin1567 1y agoIt's kind of nostalgic and make me curious: Were there many magical things like this in the early internet days.
- a_t48 1y agoMy wife has a little thermal camera (Vivitar Instant Camera) that she takes to parties and events. The picture/print quality is a bit better than a gameboy camera, certainly not HD, but also fractions of a cent per picture rather than a dollar like you'd pay for a Polaroid. Fun stuff.
- jopsen 1y agoI bought some for my nephews (age 3-4), it's a lot of fun, because it's instant physical feedback. Also if you buy a pack of BPA-free paper rolls, you get a crazy amount of pictures for $20. Granted you'll have to re-roll them into smaller rolls to fit the camera.
- dudeinjapan 1y agoFor those interested I open-sourced library in Ruby which does thermal printing: https://github.com/tablecheck/thermal/ https://github.com/tablecheck/thermal/ Among other things it has very broad printer support and Chinese-Japanese-Korean character support (requires purchasing a model with the chars preloaded). It's still under active development but it references the PHP library the author mentions. This lib is actually used in a many restaurants in Asia.
- bwoodward 1y agoI'd love to have an impact receipt printer for this so I don't have to source thermal paper etc. They aren't difficult to find, but they're too expensive for a stupid project like this, which is a glorified fax machine.
- cartoonworld 1y agoMaybe the fax machine is a glorified receipt printer?
- haruka_ff 1y agoI have a Star Micronics receipt printer and have a similar setup, and when people in my community used it, it was fun. And the issue is that, it's only fun as long as you have people using it... I did write a StarPRNT protocol library for it, but in hindsight, I probably should have used ESC/POS instead.
- chwonl 1y agoVery cool
- igtztorrero 1y agoMessage sent from igtztorrero wonderful day
- djhworld 1y agoThere's something quite pleasing about writing a message and living, at least, with the thought of it causing some physical action (printing) in the real world. I mean, for all we know Andrew probably ran out of printer paper hours ago so the message has gone into the ether, but it's nice to think it happened at least!