saw 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!
There 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/)
> The team at Berg invested a lot of time developing the visual language and aesthetics of Little Printer, across the physical device and their web service.
Shame they didn't bother to invest any time in making sure their expensive devices wouldn't end up as paperweights. Seriously, it's infuriating that they were lauded for the creativity of this project but it's fallen to hobbyists and volunteers to engineer an entire suite of software to make this dead hardware work again, just because the initial developers were either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too restricted by bean-counters to develop open source (or at least self-hostable) software for these machines. You can't even change the server address of these things without hardware flashing and risking bricking your hub.
When California mandated prop 65 warnings to be posted in every single parking garage in the state, that’s when I decided we’ve truly jumped the shark. These giant signs on every garage are now admonishing us to be careful not to spend any time in these garages because of the so dangerous fumes. I want to add on to it in sharpie: “Also, stay at least 200 feet away from any road, street or highway, so just basically go camp in the fucking woods for the rest of your life!”
This 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!
I 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.
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.
"In the 2010s public health agencies in the EU,[81][82][83] US,[84][85] Canada,[86] Australia[87] and Japan as well as the WHO[12] all reviewed the health risks of BPA, and found normal exposure to be below the level currently associated with risk."
If it has some health effects, they've been incredibly hard to actually pin down..
You do know that BPA-free just means they use BPS or some other bisphenol plasticizer, right? Right? Because all of the research was focused on BPA and nobody tested BPS even though they're quite similar chemically.
You just can't polymerize plastics without a plasticizer. It's just not allowed by chemistry. No free lunch.
If you want something that's not going to leach huge amounts of plasticizers onto your fingers, use an inkjet or a laser toner printer or a laser marking machine.
They don't really make those for receipts, though, because fingers tend to be wet and powdered toner is expensive.
I'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.
Somebody 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.
I'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.
I 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.
Russian 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
For 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.
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[ 27.3 ms ] story [ 1306 ms ] threadthe 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!
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)
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/)
Shame they didn't bother to invest any time in making sure their expensive devices wouldn't end up as paperweights. Seriously, it's infuriating that they were lauded for the creativity of this project but it's fallen to hobbyists and volunteers to engineer an entire suite of software to make this dead hardware work again, just because the initial developers were either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too restricted by bean-counters to develop open source (or at least self-hostable) software for these machines. You can't even change the server address of these things without hardware flashing and risking bricking your hub.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
> live in city
> breathe vehicle exhaust and tire dust everyday
> drink alcohol
> drive to my desk job
> live on ultra processed food
> salt and sugar for a treat
> better not touch this piece of paper - for my health
> open another Monster energy drink (tm). I can sleep when I’m dead.
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.
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.
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
"In the 2010s public health agencies in the EU,[81][82][83] US,[84][85] Canada,[86] Australia[87] and Japan as well as the WHO[12] all reviewed the health risks of BPA, and found normal exposure to be below the level currently associated with risk."
If it has some health effects, they've been incredibly hard to actually pin down..
You just can't polymerize plastics without a plasticizer. It's just not allowed by chemistry. No free lunch.
If you want something that's not going to leach huge amounts of plasticizers onto your fingers, use an inkjet or a laser toner printer or a laser marking machine.
They don't really make those for receipts, though, because fingers tend to be wet and powdered toner is expensive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.