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Herry

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Joined: 31/05/2014
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Posted: 12:01am 01 Oct 2020

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TassyJim said

You would still have to come up with a means of taking the data from the CMM2 and preparing it for printing.

Jim

Thanks Jim. in my ignorance(?)I felt just sending the serial file should do it

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bigmik

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Joined: 20/06/2011
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Posted: 01:30am 01 Oct 2020

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Hi Herry, All,

I think you mean Larger printers but there seems to be many smaller and cheap 58mm and 80mm printers on eBay and other places that accept ECS/POS commands and they even have multiple inputs (USB, RS232, TTL serial) so you could presumably just plonk it onto the TTL output of the CMM2.

If these are of interest I will post a few examples.

Mick

Mick's uMite Stuff can be found >>> HERE (Kindly hosted by Dontronics) <<<

Herry

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Posted: 03:31am 01 Oct 2020

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No. I'd like to keep to my existing printers. No room for anything else~

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Herry

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Posted: 01:50am 03 Oct 2020

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Update for those interested. I have ordered a (sacrilege on this thread I expect) Raspberry Pi 4B. I intend to use CUPS to connect with a selected Network printer. Then to develop the idea of printing direct from a serial file using Python, then to transmit a serial file to the Pi from the CMM2, finally to send print jobs to the CMM2 serial file using a simple subroutine. The whole thing would work in reverse of course. with the Pi as a headless server, once it is set up. That's just the way I'm going to develop it. Optimist?
Edited 2020-10-03 11:52 by Herry

Senior?! �Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner...

robert.rozee
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Joined: 31/12/2012
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Posted: 05:32am 03 Oct 2020

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good plan - although if used just as a print server, a RPi 4B is a bit of an overkill; a RPi zero would have been more than sufficient.

if a device is running all day / all year round, it is always worthwhile considering the cost of the electricity to power the device. on the assumption of electricity costing 30 cents per unit (kilowatt/hour, this is an average price here in nz), this works out to around nz$2.60 per watt per year.

yearly_cost = price_per_kw/h x watts x 8.8

so having a media PC that consumes 100w of electricity turned on permanently costs you about $260/year, or $22/month.

cheers,
rob :-)

Herry

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Posted: 05:55am 03 Oct 2020

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Thanks Rob. I'm not nearly clued up enough to know that. But I will only put it on when using it...
Edited 2020-10-03 17:28 by Herry

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TassyJim

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Posted: 07:35am 03 Oct 2020

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It should be do-able on the RPi.

I have been playing with a program for the PC to do the same, not that I am likely to use it much.

So far, the font is fixed at Courier New 10 point. The point size is approximate and assumes 600dpi printer.
You can change it in the inf file which appears in the program folder on first run.

To use the program.
Connect com1 or com2 on the CMM2/micromite to a USB-TTL converter on the PC.
On the PC, select printer on startup, select the port and baud rate.
Press START.

This is a test program I used o the CMM2.

' TassyJim October 2020
' LPRINT test
OPEN "com2:115200" AS #2

FOR n = 1 TO 15
PRINT #2, "Testing";TAB(20);"col20"
PAUSE 100
NEXT n
PRINT #2, CHR$(12); ' formfeed

FOR n = 1 TO 15
PRINT #2, "Page two";TAB(20);"col20"
PAUSE 100
NEXT n
PRINT #2, CHR$(12); ' formfeed
PAUSE 200 ' wait for the serial port buffer to empty
CLOSE #2
END

Send a formfeed CHR$(12) to print each page.

I used com2 but com1 would be just as usable.

I will add commands to change font and size from the CMM.
Also colour is on the list.

MM_LPRINT.zip

Jim

VK7JH
MMedit

Herry

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Posted: 07:41am 03 Oct 2020

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That was what I originally had in mind. But perhaps it doesn't work with all USB printers?

Senior?! �Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner...

TassyJim

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Posted: 07:47am 03 Oct 2020

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The program in the ZIP is a Windows program that will print to any network (or USB) printer.
It does what your Python program is going to do on the RPi

You just need the physical link from the CMM2 to the PC.

Jim

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Herry

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Posted: 07:53am 03 Oct 2020

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Oh, I got the impression from this thread and other queries that it could not be done as simply as that. Can you give more detail about the hardware interface, and also what language the zip is in.

Senior?! �Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner...

TassyJim

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Posted: 08:16am 03 Oct 2020

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The program is written in PureBasic but any programming language that has printing ability and serial port capabilities will do.

The interface is any USB-TTL adapter. The RPi doesn't need that because it has serial ports built in.

VK7JH
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zeitfest
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Posted: 11:05am 03 Oct 2020

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Just a thought -
Use a wifi enabled SD card and a folder-watcher on a PC. Printing then puts a new file on the sd card, and the folder watcher then sends it to printer. Probably too many assumptions to work though

mkopack73
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Joined: 03/07/2020
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Posted: 12:39pm 03 Oct 2020

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zeitfest said Just a thought -
Use a wifi enabled SD card and a folder-watcher on a PC. Printing then puts a new file on the sd card, and the folder watcher then sends it to printer. Probably too many assumptions to work though �

If you mean a wifi Sd card on the CMM2, then so far I haven�t found one that works....

Herry

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Posted: 06:05pm 03 Oct 2020

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TassyJim said The program is written in PureBasic but any programming language that has printing ability and serial port capabilities will do.

The interface is any USB-TTL adapter. The RPi doesn't need that because it has serial ports built in.

Thank you. This is very much what I had in mind, except that I am aiming at making this work with a headless Pi not requiring any actions at the Pi end, rather than using the my main Windows set-up. I am hoping to send the print job straight to either my router and printer network or to a selected printer.

As a separate issue, is anyone else seeing these phony 'Dick Smith easy money' adverts (which are NOT from Dick) on here. Huge one below), or is it just my machine?

Senior?! �Whatever it says, I'm a complete and utter beginner...

TassyJim

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Posted: 08:32pm 03 Oct 2020

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Herry said
As a separate issue, is anyone else seeing these phony 'Dick Smith easy money' adverts (which are NOT from Dick) on here. Huge one below), or is it just my machine?

This web site is one of the few that I don't have the add-blocker turned on for. Gizmo deserves the (trickle of) money it gives.

I never get tempted to click on any advert, Dick Smith or otherwise.

Jim

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Herry

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Posted: 09:58pm 03 Oct 2020

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A bit OT for this forum but the point about the phony 'Dick Smith' adverts are that they use his image and name entirely without his permission, to promote scams/spam. And Google must know who they are, because they must pay for exposure!

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CaptainBoing

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Posted: 07:55am 04 Oct 2020

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Herry said A bit OT for this forum but the point about the phony 'Dick Smith' adverts are that they use his image and name entirely without his permission, to promote scams/spam. And Google must know who they are, because they must pay for exposure!

Not nice is it

It's money and a lot of big corps (the bigger the more-so) will wink at wrong-doing so long as it generally is:
1. Low Level or they think they'll get away with it
2. Brings in $$$
3. No-one complains

In their defence, it is just possible that they can't screen every ad with a human, Google and others have a tiger by the tail - they need the $ but don't have the time to police everything... so they allow us to do it for them when we are offended -oh, and "THE ALGORITHM" (dun dun dunnnnnn)

Herry

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Posted: 09:39am 04 Oct 2020

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Dick certainly does complain...

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JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 02:14pm 04 Oct 2020

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google have VAST amounts of money so could - and should - put a lot more effort in to police (ban) things.

Do no evil...

John

CaptainBoing

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Posted: 08:29pm 04 Oct 2020

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yeah - about that...

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-dont-be-evil-from-1826153393

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