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USB-to-WiFi print server for old printers – would it be useful for YOU?

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First post, by Tracer-5

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I'm thinking on making a crowdfunding campaign for the western audience for a proper, modern print server device which allows to:

  • Convert your old USB printer (or MFP) into Wi-Fi printer/MFP
  • Print and scan without drivers from Windows/macOS/Linux, as well as iOS/Android
  • Use your old printer with any modern PC, Mac or smartphone, even if the driver is obsolete and doesn't work on current OS versions
  • Use your new printer with (almost) any old PC, as it accepts PostScript and converts it to printer's native printing language

I've spend the last 3 years making and improving the underlying CUPS printing stack, SANE scanning engine, and open-source printer drivers, along with the device. It was selling mostly in ex-CIS countries, only some have been sold to EU, US, Canada, Africa. Now I'm out of hardware and the current procurement price is ×2 of the previous price.

In the EU, there are companies which specialize on buying old used printers from the golden era of manufacturing (2004-2012), professionally refurbish them, and sell with the warranty. These older printers are usually much sturdier and cheaper in maintenance than the current models. That's why there's a need for such a device even when the user buys 'new' printer, because many want to print over Wi-Fi.

Is it's the case for the US as well? I've seen different sellers on ebay for older printers, but the idea of buying a used printer doesn't seem to be common at all from what I could see.

This is more or less a preconfigured ARM SBC running customized Debian 12 (to act as appliance, with factory reset functions, flash endurance tuning, web interface, hardware Wi-Fi switch, etc), with CUPS + SANE + AirSane + box86, with all the drivers installed and tested (incl. many proprietary, for x86, which are running under emulation), and many patches to ensure stable and fast operation.
The device comes with the archive with the firmware, source code, mkosi-based cross-compilation build system.
Besides the device you get a free tech support from the living human being who takes responsibility for fixing possible compatibility issues with your printer (I'm the maintainer of several open-source printer drivers and also CUPS and SANE contributor).

The price would be around $45-60. Used to be cheaper, but due to current RAM prices can't go lower unfortunately.

Do you personally want such a device (or know someone who might want it) and would buy it for this price?

Reply 2 of 5, by Tracer-5

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cyclone3d wrote on Yesterday, 15:43:

Would it be possible to hook a USB hub up to the USB port and have this device be able to host multiple printers?

Yes, it works that way. The only limitation is that you can't do that with Canon CAPT-based printers (at least without manual tinkering). All the other printers could be connected over USB hub.
The device is used by printer technicians who refill cartridges, they have about a dozen of printers connected to a single print server.

Reply 4 of 5, by darry

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Hi Tracer-5!

I implemented a significant subset of that functionality (for a single printer scanner model with official current x86-64 Linux support, admittedly ) for my own printing and scanning needs in a small VM that runs on my NAS machine (Debian x86-64) [1] a little while back [1]. Had I known about your polished, turnkey solution at the time, I might not have bothered DIY-ing it.

In fact, I have been considering DIY-ing a similar setup for my mom using either an older Raspberry Pi or an old Chromebook or Chromebox. However, if your solution is available, works seamlessly and is easy to set up, I think it would be worthwhile even for me to buy it instead of DIY-ing it. Time is one of my more significant constraints, these days.

Depending on how full featured the scanner support is, your solution might be a viable alternative to SilverFast, for at least some use cases.

In the context of today's memory prices, up to 60 $ (presumably USD), is not unreasonable, far from it. That being said, I do wonder if it might possibly be worthwhile for you to offer multiple hardware tiers, depending on the needs of a given use case. For example, if a given printer/scanner does have ARM compatible binaries, maybe a lower performance/spec platform could suffice. Similarly, if an end user does not need WI-FI, an Ethernet-only option might be lest costly. Obviously, this would all need to be balanced with the potentially higher development, maintenance and support efforts and costs.

[1]
Re: Moments in computing history when you felt that the future had arrived
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Reply 5 of 5, by Tracer-5

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darry wrote on Today, 00:27:

Had I known about your polished, turnkey solution at the time, I might not have bothered DIY-ing it.

Hey, yes, that's my main reason for this device to exist. If I could buy something like this on the market, I would.

darry wrote on Today, 00:27:

Depending on how full featured the scanner support is, your solution might be a viable alternative to SilverFast, for at least some use cases.

Scanning is based on SANE + AirSane, probably only basic support for dedicated scanner if that's what you're thinking.

darry wrote on Today, 00:27:

That being said, I do wonder if it might possibly be worthwhile for you to offer multiple hardware tiers, depending on the needs of a given use case. For example, if a given printer/scanner does have ARM compatible binaries

Emulation is not that low-performance for everything except Canon UFR-II. This one has only x86, x86_64 and ARM64 builds, and more or less the only reason to choose ARM64 CPU instead of a simpler ARMv7.
I though about tiers, it's possible to make a cheaper device with slow UFR-II driver (and everything other relatively fast), but the main issue with tiers is that you get different Wi-Fi module as well.
Wi-Fi modules are one worse than the other, all buggy and requires testing, validation and bug fixing. I'm 100% sure Wi-Fi modules are the core reason that Wi-Fi printers are deem unreliable, because all of them have issues with Multicast in one way or another.

https://printserver.ink/blog/blame-wifi-drive … scovery-issues/

darry wrote on Today, 00:27:

Ethernet-only option might be lest costly

Average user wants Wi-Fi connectivity. If there's a tier, all of them will have Wi-Fi, and Ethernet is made optional (USB module). I used to have such setup with my first Orange Pi 3G-IoT board, where I enabled all Realtek-based USB-Ethernet adapters as a connectivity option.

Anyway, here's the website: https://printserver.ink/
And a changelog: https://printserver.ink/docs-en/firmware/
The majority of the bugs in changelog are triaged and fixed by me.

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