@gauntface/printboy NPM

Printboy

A simple service to print labels.

This is built for personal use case of easily printing return labels from a Raspberry Pi but there is no reason it couldn't be altered and improved for your use-cases.

It works by "generating" a label on a HTML canvas which is saved as a png and then printed via an lp command.

Printboy

Setup

Print install

The first thing to do is ensure the printer works via CUPs.

A lot of this is from these articles:

Install CUPs sudo apt-get install -y git cups cups-client printer-driver-dymo or sudo dnf install cups-deve;
Get printer definition
1. git clone https://github.com/matthiasbock/dymo-cups-drivers.git
2. sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/cups/model
3. sudo cp dymo-cups-drivers/ppd/lw450.ppd /usr/share/cups/model/
Add yourself as a cups admin sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin $USER

Allow remote access to cups:

sudo cupsctl --remote-admin
sudo service cups restart

Go to CUPs admin page http://localhost:631
1. Use your computer login credentials for the username and password for the site
Install the printer
1. IMPORTANT: Use DYMO_LabelWriter_450_Turbo for the printer name, otherwise printboy will not work.
2. Cups should pick the correct driver for you.
3. For general:
  - Output Resolution: 300x600 DPI
  - Print Quality: Barcodes and Graphics
  - Media Size:
    - 30252 Address: 1-1/8" x 3"
    - 30364 Name Badge: 2-1/4" x 4"
Run a test print

Install printboy

Install node
Run npm install @gauntface/printboy
Run cd node_modules/@gauntface/printboy
Run npm run setup
Look at the output for the pm2 command to setup startup

Optional: Install Reverse Proxy

Run sudo apt update && sudo apt install nginx

Run sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Change the location / { block to use:

location / {
        # First attempt to serve request as file, then
        # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
        # try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:1314;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_cache_valid 5m;
}