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Output to line printer #42

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thesailingengineer opened this issue Apr 19, 2023 · 5 comments · May be fixed by #44
Closed

Output to line printer #42

thesailingengineer opened this issue Apr 19, 2023 · 5 comments · May be fixed by #44

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@thesailingengineer
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I'm trying to work on a signalk plugin to output a line of log text (very simple Lat/Lon, COG, SOG, Wind) to a line printer at a given time (every 15min or hour etc), so that if any electrical failure were to occur, the log would exitst in paper form.
I have a 4" wide receipt printer and can send line of text by saving the text to /dev/usb/lp0.
I realise that 90% of what I am tying to achieve is already done by this plugin, so is it possible to add an option to send user defined values from the hourly log output to a user defined location (eg. /dev/usb/lp0)?
@bergie
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bergie commented Apr 19, 2023

That's interesting! Can you share the hardware you're using?

As for implementing this in the plugin, that's certainly possible. Though you'd probably get it quicker by just doing a cronjob that reads the YAML log files

@thesailingengineer
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I bought a Star TSP800ii from ebay - it's not the cheapest (but still not expensive), but I wanted a 4" width to get a full useful log reading on a line. It runs from 24v and is quite fussy about this, so will need to get a 12- 24v converter for the boat, but for now it runs fine from a bench supply.
Funny, before I started looking at signalk plugins I thought about using a cron job - but actually, maybe just tailing the YAML log with a little formatting would do the trick!
20230419_221315
20230419_221325
complete with a mock-up log I printed using echo 'text' > /dev/usb/lp0
It's amazingly simple, working out of the box with Linux, just needed CUPS disabling to stop it from blocking the port.
The idea came from the fact that my intentions are always good when I sail, and I do keep a paper log, but always forget to set an alarm for the hour, and end up missing log readings. When going further afield, it's a good back up should the electronics fail, hence the printer idea - then I found your plugin, which is amazing, and does literally everything I want (including autostart), but not the line printing bit - an old-fashioned idea, but one I think is ideal for boat usage!

@bergie bergie mentioned this issue Apr 27, 2023
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@bergie
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bergie commented Apr 27, 2023

@thesailingengineer can you give PR #44 a spin? Should do the trick, but obviously I don't have a printer here to test with.

@bergie
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bergie commented Aug 19, 2023

Some more receipt printer ideas from aviation https://carloslagoa.com/blog/flipreps/flipreps.html

@bergie bergie mentioned this issue Dec 11, 2023
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@bergie
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bergie commented Nov 8, 2024

Ended up implementing this as a separate service:
https://github.com/meri-imperiumi/logbook-printer

@bergie bergie closed this as completed Nov 8, 2024
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Append new log entries to a file meri-imperiumi/signalk-logbook
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@bergie @thesailingengineer