Searching for a Print Server
We don’t very often use our printers - probably a couple of times a month. We have two, an inkjet (HP Envy 4500) and a laser (Brother HL-1110), the inkjet has no ink cartridges, it’s primarily a scanner.
The inkjet is wireless, which makes things nice: lack of one of the most expensive substances in the world notwithstanding, for the most part it “just works”. The laser however is a bit more complicated, as it’s a USB-only device. It was hooked up to Duncan’s desktop for quite a while, which worked well until it died. I then moved it into my office and hooked it up to my desktop, where (because I dual boot to Linux) it’s been problematic getting it to reliably share ever since.
Several times it’s crossed my mind that if we had a wireless USB print server, this problem would solve itself, but most of these devices are so expensive that simply buying another laser printer with 802.11 integrated would be cheaper.
Today, it crossed my mind that I could potentially use a Raspberry Pi to do the same thing, and it turns out someone’s already done the hard work. It’s probably going to be cheaper and easier to simply rearrange where the NAS lives and hang the printer off the NAS as well, but at least the option is there - and I’ve wanted a Raspberry Pi for a while now and this would give me the excuse to buy one.
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