this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Free and Open Source Software

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FOSS-Firmware for printers? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by RandomLegend@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/foss@beehaw.org
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We all are pretty annoyed at how the printer industry is screwing customers over. There are a few printers that are really good but most of them suck and try to suck out your money by demanding ink when none is needed.

And i also know that it's nearly impossible to create an open-source printer that can be build by smaller businesses like the 3D printing space can do.

But are there any projects underway to reverse-engineer printer firmware and make it possible to flash the custom ROM onto a printer? No specific manufacturer in mind right now, but wouldn't that make things better? Simply disable all the stupid checks that claim that you NEED ink to scan or that you NEED yellow to print a black text?

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[–] GravelPieceOfSword@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That would be cool.

Here's my new setup that might not work for everyone, but I'd recommend thinking about if you're able to.

  1. Network printers are blocked from Internet by my router. They have static IP addresses allocated (permanent DHCP leases) for convenience.

  2. I have some Canon laser printers. I don't want to install Canon software across my devices, so I setup a cups print server (lxc container) where I installed the software.

  3. I setup and shared the printers (local network only), made them discoverable.

  4. I use the CUPS web GUI over ssh tunnel if I need to check on job queues and do maintenance/admin tasks (don't usually have to).

Clients immediately find the printers on the server, no driver required.

As a bonus, I made the margins 0 on the CUPS ppd on the server so that I get to print without margins when so desired (Canon has fixed minimum margins otherwise).

The one caveat is that the Canon drivers don't work on raspberry pi (arm), so while I have a to-do to get around that by using a virtualization layer, you need a separate Intel/AMD machine for the print server if your printer doesn't support ARM.

[–] d_k_bo@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Network printers are blocked from Internet by my router. They have static IP addresses allocated (permanent DHCP leases) for convenience.

I used to have a HP printer that refused to connect to my wifi network if it was blocked from accessing the internet. So I had to unblock it every time I restarted my printer.

[–] GravelPieceOfSword@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wow, that's so messed up: I didn't know HP did that.. I think it might just be a matter of time before others follow suit.

Sounds very Wireshark worthy!

[–] d_k_bo@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I don't even think that it behaved like that for malicious purposes. It looked more like incompetence.

[–] debanqued@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Does it say “Internet required” on the box? If not, a good activist move might be to have a bunch of people buy them, set them up on a disconnected machine, then return them for a refund.