A Better Cloud Printer I
So this is my ideal cloud thermal printer:- Small form factor. (takes little desktop space)
- Connects on Lan/Wifi/3G
- Easy to use API to print things.
- Provide server infrastructure at very low recurring charge. (Just like Twilio)
- And the printer sells for under $100
Cost
My initial thought was to attach a Raspberry Pi to a regular thermal printer. The total cost would be roughly $100.- $50 Thermal printer
- $40 Raspberry Pi
- $10 SD card
- Adding 3G connectivity would require $50 extra 3G dongle
However, the search for a $50 thermal printer took me to an unexpected journey. You can read the experiences on my other blog posts. (Post 1),(Post 2). Long story short, now I have a working Thermal Printer attached to the Raspberry Pi, the rest is software.
Software
Then the problem becomes how to implement a software stack to control printer from remote server.- Communication between printer and server
- All China-made GPRS printers uses some custom TCP Socks protocol. This requires me to implement all server structure and error checking mechanism. (Not great)
- TCP Socks will have problem behind firewall/proxy.(Not great)
- I favor XMPP protocol for its ability to fallback to HTTP if Socks fail.
- XMPP servers already implemented off-line message and presence etc.
- Downside is: XMPP uses more bandwidth than custom TCP Socks.
- The actual print out
- This is simple, just issue ESC/POS command to serial port.
- API interface for issuing printing command, managing printer.
- The server must have a XMPP master node to oversee all printers.
- Upon every API request, the master node talks to printer and returns result to caller.
- API return data in JSON form.
- Server Software
- RPi runs archlinux because I wish to use the latest software.
- Final product should run a more stable distro.
- Prosody as XMPP server. Fast, small memory footprint.
- Nginx/PHP-fpm as web server.
- Programming landuage
- It appears that Python has better resources to work on Raspberry Pi as XMPP client.
- PHP for API, easy to use. Small resource foot print.
Software II
- Gracious shutdown (fixed, Jan 2014)
- File System corruption. The printer is turned off arbitrarily. However, default Linux filesystems are not designed to handle that.
- Need to fit Archlinux onto live-CD or something similar.
- Also need the client to be able to update itself. Therefore it takes a little more than live-CD.
- XMPP master node (fixed, Jan 2014)
- At every API request, I need to initialize the master node in PHP. Is there a way to have a long-running master-node?
- What if the long-running master-node fails? How do I fail-over to a second node?
- It is possible for printer to initial the communication when coming online; how do I feedback to the server?
- Remote Configuration
- Since the printer is suppose to "just work" for end user, I need something to config the printer's wifi/network remotely.
- what if I need to config WIFI when the printer is not connected?
Next post: A Better Cloud Printer II - API definition
Hello I m seeking to hire someone who can help me with making a cloud print solution
ReplyDeleteEssentially having a wireless thermal printer automatically print from a SMS (via a gateway like Twilio).
We can use raspberry pi or if there is thermal printer with sm card that would be even better
Please help me
Eagleofny@yahoo.com