IoT Printer

A presentation at IOT London, about http://exciting.io/printer, the IoT printer platform I built a few years ago

Transcript

1. “An open-source
   distributed platform
   for IoT printers”
   James Adam - @lazyatom - @freerange
   If you’re bored:
   bit.ly/printermail :: bit.ly/printerpaint
   Text
   

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2. Disclaimer:
   I don’t know what I
   am doing.
   

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3. Project Codename:
   Timmy Printface
   gofreerange.com/timmy
   

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4. Timmy - April 2011
   

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7. Tom Taylor’s Microprinter, 2009
   (photo by Tom Armitage)
   

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8. Timmy at Interesting ’11
   (Photo by Roo Reynolds)
   

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10. The problem with
    hacks is that they are
    hacky.
    

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13. Timmy at Interesting ’11
    (Photo by Roo Reynolds)
    

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15. gofreerange.com/hello-printer
    

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16. The Goal:
    Make it less of a
    giant ugly hack.
    

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17. Printer.
    gofreerange.com/printer
    

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18. Cheap printer
    Ethernet shield
    Arduino
    Some LEDs, etc
    

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20. Poll a special URL
    Emit data via serial
    Manage some LEDs
    and maybe a
    button?
    

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24. Content Services
    produce HTML
    pages, and post
    URLs for those
    pages to Backend
    Servers.
    

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25. Backend
    Servers
    expect
    URLs to
    HTML
    pages...
    ... and
    converts
    them into
    1-bit
    images,
    then serial
    commands
    

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26. Printers download
    serial commands
    and send them
    directly to printer
    peripherals.
    

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27. Content generation is easy in HTML
    

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28. Content can come from many places
    

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29. http://backend1/print/abc123
    

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30. bit.ly/printermail
    

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31. bit.ly/printerpaint
    

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34. No central server either
    

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35. Two Backend
    Servers using
    the same
    Content Service
    

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36. •Other people are better at design
    than I am;
    •Other people have better ideas for
    content that I have;
    •So: make it easy for them to produce
    and print content, from which
    everyone benefits.
    The Plan:
    

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39. •HTTP Header parsing
    •Running out of space on Arduino
    •Reliable networking is hard
    •Programming in C is a pain in the
    fucking ass.
    TODO
    

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40. More information
    gofreerange.com/printer
    gofreerange.com/hello-printer
    github.com/freerange/printer
    .../wiki
    .../issues
    

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