Microprinter

Tom describes it as "an experiment in physical activity streams and notification, using a repurposed receipt printer connected to the web". Hackers across the country are buying up old old receipt printers and imaginatively repurposing them into something new. We call them microprinters.

Background:

• Read about Matt Webb's 'social letterbox' idea (the granddaddy).
• Tom Taylor's Microprinter (the daddy) is a CBM 231, and it was well received at Papercamp 09 in London.
• Chris Heathcote has one (the gay uncle) (a CBM 720. 2 colour, papercut, impact/dot matrix, serial. Has a crazy mode that doesn't require a MAX232). He's made a time receipt printer.
• Roo has one (a CBM 231) and has shared a simple Arduino patch. He's excited by learning how to do bitmap images too, and thinks sparklines will be interesting.
• Nick O'Leary has a CBM 231.
• Vahakn Matossian has used one in an Artwork with Ambiguous Quadrupeds. He really wants to learn how to do bitmaps too, and has succeeded in printing a test with aa additive binary pattern relating to the pixels available on the print head.
• Philip has an APS printer (model BPM205). Datasheet (pdf)
• Nick Aldwin has a Custom Neo's (with an excellent "custom commands" instruction manual).  He wants to develop something with an Arduino, but while waiting for the MAX2323 to arrive, he's working on communication via C#.
• Me too! I (John Honniball) have just acquired a Citizen CBM 1000 on a certain well-known auction website (there were five more on offer).
• Colm McMullan has a Citizen iDP-3420 and has hooked it all up to a violet mir:ror RFID device to trigger print events (see the blog post).
• Jason Davies has just acquired a CBM 231 and is now waiting for an Arduino board to arrive.
• Who else? More on the way, I know... (@beng, @mattxbart, @adamend, @plasticine, @martynrdavies, @wschenk, @dmje all have one?)

Getting started:

1. Manuals for Citizen printers at http://www.goodson.com.au/support/Download_UM_citizen.htm
2. Tom's Ethernet Arduino sketch on Github shows how to listen using an Arduino ethernet shield and send text to the printer.
3. Roo's Arduino sketch on Github doesn't do ethernet, but does show how to do barcodes and a few other formatting options.

Tips and tricks:

• Hold down 'LF' (line feed) button while powering on the printer to get a two part self-test (part 1, part 2). Handy for testing it offline.
• ...

Questions (help!)

• How do you do images?
• Formatting - I'm reading a serverside script and have line breaks (I believe the CBM 231 takes whitespace and prints as line breaks?) in it but also want to pass other simple formatting - for instance say a <h3> tag I want to "translate" into a larger font on the printer. I'm thinking a simple find/replace but am having trouble with my noobesque knowledge of arduino...

Thoughts and ideas

• Is anyone using a different printer? Perhaps we should split the bits which are specific to the Citizen CBM off into their own section.
  • I (Nick Aldwin) am, but most of the syntax is the same--mostly only the actual hex commands are different.
• Datasheet link to the APS printer is linked above, I don't know which bits are specific or not. It does work with Roo's sketch but prints an extra "€" at each start (0xFF most likely). Does not have autocut.
• ...
• A ticket printer, the kind used at horse track betting machines, would produce a lot more durable result. Scouring ebay for the past few days doesn't turn up anything, at least not affordable. Anyone have any thoughts on this?