USB printer through ethernet

[Debracom]

hello everybody
I am new to this forum and hope that some of you may be able to help me. I will be hanging a lot around this forum and try to help out other where I can.
I am a student from Belgium intercommunication systems, and am addicted to security (codelocks, fingerprints, etc..) and do a lot of borland C++ Builder programming.
Though I have a problem. At my house we print a lot. We used to have a laser printer with parrallel connection, and my router had an embedded printserver with also a parrellel connection. Since the printer is broken we bought a new one with USB, parr. isn't available anymore here and I was thinking of switching to USB anyway. But now my computer has to be on the whole day (I connected & shared the printer on my computer).
So now I'm thinking of making something where you can connect a little PCB to the router (10/100base-tx) and gives it through to my USB printer.
But I really don't know where to even start . Maybe an alike project has been made already, maybe it's impossible because the drivers of each printer are different, I don't know.
any suggestions and/or solutions?
thank you

 

[Debracom]

appearantely this is way too hard

anyway I found something called "picowebserver". this is a very small webserver intended for switching relays and storing (very small) webpages. maybe this is a way to the solutions. With this webserver you've got a network address, input, tcp/ip stack and output. but again, the drivers & windows are the worst thing.
I'm currently reading encapsulating USBframes into tcp/ip frames, a howto.

does anyone has some experience with the picowebserver? good, bad, limitations, etc.. ?

 

[DarkJedi]

I had the same problem in my house, at the end i bought a parallel port printer, but from what i've hear, there are usb printer servers you can use, thouhgt they can be rather expensive, other way to go is to make an usb to parallel converter since you server is already parallel, i think is much easier than moving usb to ethernet.

I've seen this converters in some stores, usb to parallel.

 

[Ace-X]

You can use routers with USB host. For example, ASUS WL-500g has WAN Ethernet, LAN Ethernet, USB host and LPT ports. Also, it runs open-source modification of Linux, so you can make everything you want with this stuff. Also, it is quite cheap (about $60) and has ARM processor, so it could be nice development platform for you in future ;-)

 

[gold_kiss]

Hi,
for this to achieve you need to build a print server. If you are having an existing LAN connection. And you need to add in your USB printer to the LAN wht I suggest is simply go in for a router with a print server. These days you can get a simple router which has Wi-Fi access nodes + print server or Webcam connection .

Cost you about $150-$200.
Thanks,
Gold_kiss

 

[h2oo2h]

I think that it this project is "too complicated" fro the Pico Webserver.
It is not implements the full TCP/IP stack, as I know.
But if it implements it, then you have to implement a printer protocol over it (eg. lpr).
BTW. I agree with the previous replies. It is better to buy a router with USB printer port, or a simple print server with USB port (~100 USD).

 

[abc123]

usb printer server with 10/100m ethernet interface is around us$19 now, even cheaper when on sale. (I got mine for us$9.95) this may be the best solution for you. If you want to build it yourself, you need usb host chip and embedded internet chips also some buffer memory (100kbyte)to buffer the print pages and it will cost more.

usb to parallel adaptor will not work, it is for connecting to usb host (PC) not to the usb printer. you need a parallel port to usb adaptor which contains a usb host chip to connect to usb printer.

 

[techie]

Checkout the Linsys NSLU2. Apparantly some people have used it as a USB printer server. Not sure though.

Added after 6 minutes:

Wow, this ASUS WL-500g is amazing. Never seen such an integerated thing with such a small price tag.

 

[Ace-X]

Checkout the Linsys NSLU2. Apparantly some people have used it as a USB printer server. Not sure though.

Added after 6 minutes:

Wow, this ASUS WL-500g is amazing. Never seen such an integerated thing with such a small price tag.

Then give a look at Possio PX30. Short review is here: h**p://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7459336271.html.

Also, thanks for pointing to NSLU2 - it is pretty nice because it has 2 USB ports, so many functions can be added easy. It has network version of ARM from Intel and easy hackable. I read article on Tom's hardware site about firmware upgrading.

 

[feiutm9898]

I have upload a thesis using Ethernet + USB at



Take a look.