Surely many of you have an old printer with a usb cable that in many cases covers your printing needs. But it may happen that your needs change and that is not why you should change the printer or printing model.
One of the most necessary changes is network printing. A type of impression that allows us to send documents to the printer without the need for any cables nor have the printer connected to any computer. This function is very useful and it is something that we can have thanks to a Raspberry Pi board.
The great virtue of the Raspberry Pi board is that in a short space we have a minicomputer and that we will use so that our printer can have network functions. So we will need a Raspberry Pi 3 board, a microsd card, a usb cable with which to connect the printer and the plate and a housing.
It is easy to have a Network printer if we have a Raspberry Pi and a normal USB printer
In this case, the most suitable model is Raspberry Pi 3, but we can replace it with other models, although in that case we have to add a Wi-Fi key to make the connections. In the microsd card we will install Raspbian as an operating systemFollowed by CUPS in its latest version. After installing CUPS, we not only have to add the printer that we have connected to the board but also add the user Pi who is an administrator to the printing group.
Once this is done, we have to install samba. This software will allow us to connect Raspberry Pi to any Windows or Linux computer. Once this is done, we only have to connect the own network or the equipment with the Raspberry Pi and the printer. Once connected, we can print any document from any computer on the network, for this we only have to select the printer and click on the print button.
The process is simple and you just have to follow this guide if we are very novices. The result can be very beneficial for places where we don't want to throw away our old printer or don't have the resources to do so. In these situations, Raspberry Pi boards can be a great and cheap ally Do not you think?