Pis and Thermal Printers

Apr 08, 2021 in #minimalism #development

In a move where I am trying to move away from using software for tracking todo lists and other short things like shoppings lists, I bought a cheap thermal printer for my pi400.

These things are usually used for receipts, but it makes for a great little bit of paper that I can shove in a pocket or have on my desk ready to look at.

A bit of difficulties with the device that appeared when using the built in USB serial of the device. Fortunately dmesg to the rescue.

What I really like about this device is I can simple do: echo -e "Something to print" > /dev/usb/lp0 to print out the line. it's great. No need to fuck around with drivers or anything. Additionally, by keeping all my notes and lists in markdown, they print out and are human readable. Huzzah.

I then wrapped this into a shell script that adds the date of printing on the top, and a quote using fortune at the bottom, because why not.

👋

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