Raspberry Pi Wireless Print Server

DESCRIPTION

Well, apprently people don't make wireless print servers anymore. I would have loved to just buy something, plugged in the printer, and had everything magically work, but alas, it was not to be. I could only find one wireless print server for sale and spent 2 days trying to get it to work with the thermal printer, to no avail. Time to DIY it, I guess!I'm mostly documenting this for the next time I have to set this up. It was painful enough that I don't want to have to look up every step again. And hey, maybe it'll help someone. It took me about 6 hours to get everything up and running, but with these instructions, should only take about 45 minutes.Note that this all assumes you're using a private, secure network. This is definitely a more DIY and hacked solution.

DETAILS

I bought a Munbyn ITPP941 thermal USB printer for shipping labels. These printers are reasonably expensive considering they're small format and relatively low quality black adn white - this one was $144 from amazon. But compared to a traditional laser printer, the savings in toner and the speed they print at make them totally worthwhile. Plus there's a lot less label/paper waste since the labels are exactly the size of all the info printed on them.

I wanted this printer to live in the shipping area, it just seemed a litlte more convenient there than on my desk (taking up valuable space). But I wanted to be able to send a print job to it from my computer, - it's still a bit of a complex routine to create labels (especially international ones) so I still do that job. Also, I didn't want to have to dedicate an entire computer to the shipping area, just for the printer.

You used to be able to find wireless print servers pretty easily, but I guess those days are gone. The only one I could find was the StarTech.com PM1115UW for $60 on amazon. I spent 2 days trying to get it to work with the Munbyn, every possible combination of installing the printer and the server, and never could get it up and running.

I figured this was a great excuse to play around with a Raspberry Pi, this should be exactly the kind of thing it's good at. Well, it does all work - finally, after 6 freakin hours! - and the worst part was (of course) getting 2 different Windows machines talking to it. Even though both were running Windows 10, one was Windows 10 Home and the other was Windows 10 Pro, and it took 2 different methods of installing the printers, and 2 different drivers, to get everything working.

My pain is your gain. Enjoy!

BUILD INSTRUCTIONS

1. Get Your Pi Up and Running and Updated

If you haven't gotten a Pi up and running before, there are instructions all over the place, here are some from raspberrypi.org.

2. Install CUPS and SAMBA on your Raspberry Pi

There are also a bunch of online tutorials on how to set up a Raspberry Pi as a wireless print server. I used these:

• PiMyLifeUp Raspberry Pi Print Server
• CircuitDigest Raspberry Pi Print Server

Read through them first to get an idea of the whole process. Go ahead and install CUPS and SAMBA and make all the config file changes you need to. Do all of that BEFORE installing the printer and printer drivers on CUPS. More on that in the next step.

3. Install your printer/printer driver in the CUPS web interface

When you get to the part about installing the printer drivers on CUPS, that's where the fun begins. Since the Munbyn ITPP941 is an off-brand, I had a bit of trouble finding the proper drivers for the Pi. Munbyn advertises support for Windows, Mac, Linux, and the Raspberrry Pi in particular, so I assumed their drivers would be easily accessible. HA. HA. HA. They ship a USB stick with the printer, but it only contains Mac and Windows drivers (and more about that Windows driver later). All of the easily accessible links from their site are for direct downloads to the same. Or are broken links.

After Bob knows what kind of google searching and link clicking around the Munbyn site I did, I finally found a link for their entire directory of driver downloads. And there it was, in the "ITPP093+941+168+966+942" folder, The RPi Driver Installation Guide and the RPI install.run file. I've attached them in the Files section so you don't have go through the same kind of digging hell I did.

The installation guide is graphical and good - just know that Step 0 is to Then follow the rest of the instructions. A few clarifications:

• Step 0 is to put the "RPI install.run" file on your Raspberry Pi desktop, and rename it install.run. Then follow the command line instructions.
• When you get to installing it in CUPS, be sure to click "Share this Printer" checkbox.
• The driver you'll select is under a "Rollo" printer.
• The stock size for shipping labels tends to be 100 x 150 mm.

Print a test page from CUPS, just to make sure that the setup on the Pi is all good.

Congratulations! You're maybe almost halfway there. Because now you have to tackle Windows and more printer drivers, and that's a doozy of a next step.

4. Install your printer drivers in Windows 10 Home

If you have Windows 10 Pro - skip to the next step! That's right! They're different! Because Windows!

OK. Installation in Windows Home was the easier of the two. The Pi and the printer just showed up and once I figured out the driver thing, it was all good.

Note - if you haven't installed SAMBA on your Raspberry Pi yet, stop and go back to the tutorials linked above (the PiMyLifeUp one is the best) and do that.

Now, you might think - maaaaaybe if I just go to Printers, it'll show up and I can just click on it and BAM! All good! Well, you'd be wrong. It'll show up in your printer list (if you've done everything right so far) as "<PrinterName> on <RaspberryPiName>". And you'll click it, and after a spinning circle and a few seconds, you'll get this fantastic Windows 10 blue popup that - no shit - says "That didn't work". Yup. Welcome to the future!

If you haven't previously plugged your printer directly into this computer and printed to it, do that now. Follow whatever the manufacturer's Windows driver installation instructions are for your printer. If you're lucky, it'll just automatically happen when you plug the printer in. If not, you'll have to either select the driver from a list or choose it from a file location. There are plenty of other tutorials on that. For the Munbyn, I can't remember what the process was when I first hooked it up. It may have auto-installed, or I may have had to run the.exe file on the USB stick. I've attached the exe in the Files section here as well. Be sure to configure all your printer and paper settings, and print a test page.

Now we're continuing with the Windows setup detailed in the PiMyLifeUp tutorial - see it for screenshots.

• On your Windows 10 Home machine, go to Networks and you should see your Raspberry Pi listed.
• Double click it, and you should see your printer listed.
• Double click it, and you'll get a sad Windows popup saying No driver found.
• Clikc OK.
• If you're lucky, you'll see a Munbyn listing and be able to select the actual driver used for the printer. Click it and it will install. Print a test page. Change the paper and printing preferences if you need to - those are under Settings - > Devices -> Printers and Scanners -> <PrinterName> -> Manage -> Printer properties. You're done!
• If you're not lucky (like me), Windows decided to install some generic-ass "Label Printer" driver for the Munbyn and your only choices will be "Generic" and "Microsoft". I also tried searching for a specific Munbyn one both on my system and on the internet, but the only file type you're able to point the installer to is an.inf, so that nice.exe auto-installer that Munbyn provides is useless. I searched high and low for a Munbyn.inf and never found one. What I did, which ended up working, was: selected "Generic" and "Generic IBM Graphics 9pin". It will successfully install your printer in your printer list. Then go to your printer list (Settings -> Devices -> Printers and Scanners), click on your printer, click "Manage", then click "Printer Properties" in the sidebar. In that dialog, under one of the tabs, you should be able to set the printer driver to "Label Printer". Then click apply, and the dialogs will change to show all the proper settings specific to the label printer.
• Select the paper size and everything you did before for your label size (100 x 150 mm for shipping labels, I had to change from "Continuous" to something like "Labels with space between them"). Print a test page. You're done!

5. Install your printer drivers in Windows 10 Pro

Oh, what, you've successfully installed your printer on a Windows 10 Home machine and think it's just gonna be the same thing for Windows 10 Pro? HA! Think again. Microsoft hates you and wants you to suffer.

First, you may notice that your machine doesn't even see the damned Pi under Networks. What the hell, right? Windows 10 Home machine sees it, it's obviously working. Well, I dug around A LOT and finally came across this gem of a forum post. Thank you helpful people, thank you. I did both of the things the post suggested, don't know which worked. I don't even know if these are ultimately necessary, because as you'll see in a bit, I ended up using a different method. But I dunno, I figure that the darned Pi should at least show up in the places you'd think to look for it, say, if you wanted to also share some files later on. Without further ado:

First thing is that maybe your security-conscious Windows Pro machine doesn't want to connect to some other rando machine as a passwordless guest.

• Run good old regedit and go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters\AllowInsecureGuestAuth
• Note that HKLM is short for H_KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• You might think that \LanmanWorkstation\ is the name of some guy on the internet's computer and be tempted to look for your own computer name in this folder. Spoiler alert: LanmanWorkstation is what that folder is actually called.
• Add a DWORD value of 00000001.

Second thing is that maybe lack of SMB 1.0 support is the issue.

• Run optionalfeatures.exe from the search bar to get to the Turn Windows Features On/Off dialog.
• Scroll down and expand Print and Document Services
• Make sure Internet Printing Client is checked. I think I also checked LPD and LPR at this point for shits and giggles because I thought I would have to try those services later. Whatever. I don't think those are needed.
• Keep scrolling and check SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support
• Click OK
• Restart your computer

Voila! Your Raspberry Pi should now freaking show up in Networks.

Now, maybe you can follow the steps for the previous Windows 10 Home section. It's worth a shot.

Oh what, after selecting the driver, you get an error that you can't connect to the printer? HEH HEH. I'm totally laughing with you, really. Ok, you can do this, it's the final push. Follow the instructions in the CircuitDigest tutorial and see their screenshots.

• Go to the CUPS web interface, which you should be able to access from this Windows computer. Go to Administration, Manage Printers, and make a note of what the printer name is in the list.
• Go to your Printers list in Windows and click Add a Printer. Curse the powers that be that the perfectly fine looking printer that appears in the list doesn't actually let you add the printer. WHY GOD WHY?!
• Click "The printer that I want isnt' listed"
• Click the dot for "Select a shared printer by name" and type in http://(the url of your printer which should end in :631)/printers/(the printer name you took note of in step 1)
• Then click next or whatever, and voila! The printer should install.
• Print a test page. Rejoice.

It Survives Unplugging

The last step of setting everything up was really getting it settled in its final home. Behold our super fancy dust cover, which is just an upside-down Dollar Store bin.

We're using accordion-fold labels that self-feed pretty nicely, and those and the Raspberry Pi and the USB are all tidily bundled under the dust cover. We found early on that leaving the labels uncovered resulted in printing a lot of small blank spots which could interfere with the bar code. The $1 bin was the perfect size, keeps everything clean, and everything feeds underneath it nicely.

Of course, when we bundled everything tidily and set it up in its forever home, we had to unplug and replug everything. We waited about 5-10 minutes just to give everything a chance to boot and find each other again. I'm happy to report that a test page printed just fine! Be sure that your Raspberry Pi is configured to automatically log in, you can do this via command line or GUI (Menu -> Preferences -> Config).