ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Oct 16, 2017 9:49 am #70899 I'm looking for advice. Situation: Local Pizza store with Zen-cart website (hosted). For online orders the owner purchased a Epson All-In-One printer (ink-jet) and signed up for Epsonconnect. [ zen-cart sends the order via email to epsonconnect which forwards it to the printer ]. The problem is the printer is located in the prep area - flour, moisture, etc and 6 months later the printer mis-feeds the paper - nothing is printed - customer shows up 20 minutes later, "Order for Smith" -> (angry!).

I've thought, local ESP8266 (with USB port connected to a POS printer ) but that doesn't solve the mis-feed problem. Another thought is a older dot matrix tractor feed - have you priced them lately??? and they don't accept email (would require a local computer). An In-house cellphone, carried by a employee. [ they have a POS - doesn't accept emails ]

Anyone ever ??? esp8266 wifi email server, gets incoming email, Subj='New Order', send to USB printer. Is it possible? Epson TM-U220B USB receipt printer??
Twisty little passages all different...
Thanks for any help.

- Mon Oct 16, 2017 3:31 pm #70905 You should never use an inkjet printer in such an environment, specially not in a prepping area of a (any) restaurant.

Just get one of the TSP100 thermal printers by Star: there are versions with BlueTooth, WiFi, Ethernet or just serial/USB available and they're pretty cheap and quality is great (I have been installing them for years in restaurants for receipts as well as order-tickets).

Epson has similar printers (eg. the TM-88 series), with a similar price tag and quality, but I personally prefer the ones from Star.

BTW: An ESP8266 doesn't have USB, so looking for a USB-printer in combination with an ESP is senseless.
BTW2: I'm in no way affiliated with either Star or Epson, the above comes purely from my own experiences.

Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups. At least: that's what I'm assuming.

- Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:24 pm #70909 If you want to use a USB printer, use a low cost Linux board such as Pi Zero W or Pi 3 or one of the many clones. Also instead of running an email server, you can probably find a Python or Perl library to access gmail to pull down emails then print them.