[HN Gopher] Guten: A Tiny Newspaper Printer
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Guten: A Tiny Newspaper Printer
Author : thunderbong
Score : 246 points
Date : 2025-01-05 03:47 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (amanvir.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (amanvir.com)
| apgwoz wrote:
| This looks cool! Reminds me of the long defunct Little Printer
| (https://vimeo.com/32796535).
| simonw wrote:
| Yeah, Little Printer may also serve as a warning that turning
| this kind of thing into a commercial endeavor is a very
| challenging road!
|
| You should be OK if you do the Kickstarter style of thing, take
| pre-orders etc - but I would be wary about raising investment
| for this kind of project.
| rkagerer wrote:
| This is totally awesome and would be even more wonky if it came
| out on a reel of teletype tape.
| feisuzhu wrote:
| I'm using a [Gprinter
| GP-1324D](https://www.ebay.com/itm/365264659480) in everyday
| work, printing task tracking stickers, various labels, etc. It's
| designed to print shipping labels / recipients in business
| scenarios so it's fairly robust. The only con I can think of is
| its physical size. I'm not familiar with eBay, but on
| Xianyu(Chinese second hand market app), yes you can buy one using
| only $20, shipping included.
| feisuzhu wrote:
| Linux CUPS driver here: https://github.com/feisuzhu/gprinter-
| cups
| smarx007 wrote:
| This is even better as it allows you to glue the printouts on a
| diary page instead of discarding them, e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kMFWM64gVQ
| mccolin wrote:
| I have a TidByt in my office and this feels like the printed
| version of that. The ability to choose and order the sections of
| your daily newspaper from a library/app would be slick.
| dqv wrote:
| What's the deal with the thermal paper though? I guess it's
| negligible exposure since you would only be using it once a day.
| There is an alternative thermal paper that uses vitamin c. It's
| slightly more expensive but I feel like that wouldn't matter for
| something like this since it's not using nearly as much as would
| be used for retail printing. I wonder if it's worth using the
| vitamin c kind instead.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Based on some of my reading on the current thermal paper, we
| really need a safer alternative.
|
| If you deal with receipts many times in a day you should be
| wearing gloves!
| Samin100 wrote:
| This is great! I wonder how hard it would be to use a pen plotter
| instead of a thermal printer. You could even use a procedurally
| generated handwriting font and Claude to make it feel like a
| handwritten letter.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| That's a neat idea -- I wonder about pairing it with a low cost
| plotter like: https://www.generativehut.com/post/ly-
| drawbot-a-70-pen-plott...
| irs wrote:
| This is cool. Please make it so its not just for news and
| developer friendly so it can print any content on demand using
| api. Tried to use a "memobird" printer for similar purpose but
| couldn't get any support for their API.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| You can write your own script to do this. It's a few lines of
| scripting to query whatever APIs you want, and then output to
| /dev/usb0 or wherever the printer is hooked up. Seems a bit
| unnecessary to add an extra API wrapper just to do that
|
| You can test this right now by running `echo "Hello, world!" >
| /dev/usb0`, assuming a printer is connected to that USB port of
| your Unix-based device.
|
| https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/141016/a-laymans-ex...
| jossephus01 wrote:
| Interesting.i have always known usb0 exists but didnt think
| this would work. Now i am wondering what the equivalent
| command to print using bluetooth printers is.
| salgernon wrote:
| adafruit used to sell a little pi powered thermal printer[1] but
| I always found the case a little fiddly and fragile. And my
| office mate didn't care for the thing coming on at random times.
| (Not as bad as the text only 40 col commercial receipt printer
| that used actual ink and was as loud as a full size Epson MX-80.
|
| Free idea: Uber for printers. Need to print something? Car drives
| up with a printer in the boot, you print whatever (umbrella as
| appropriate) and the driver is responsible for ink and paper.
|
| [1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/717
| ornornor wrote:
| I cant imagine how much it would cost per print. I doubt anyone
| would be willing to pay 5-10$ for the first page. It's cheaper
| to drive to a print shop or send your pdf to a printing service
| and receive hard copies by mail.
| fragmede wrote:
| For those not driving, Uber package delivery will probably do
| the delivery for you.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I'm not driving and just walk or ride my bike to the next
| print shop (150m) or the further one (300m). I'm blessed to
| live in an affordable, living suburb.
|
| There's many Uber (and competitors) cars parked in my
| neighborhood but I don't see them often in the road. They
| probably roam around more pricy neighborhoods for work.
| deanputney wrote:
| Before I bought a printer for home, I'd go print things at my
| local library. Pretty convenient, and it was free for 10 b/w
| pages a week! But getting my own used Brother printer was a
| real step up.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| This is great for the environment. Millions of people could
| balance the strain they put on the planet by reading the news
| from their lithium powered Gadgets on good old paper. Win win
| latexr wrote:
| Most thermal paper is made with harmful chemicals.
| iamjackg wrote:
| I've had this same idea since I also own a thermal printer, but I
| could never get past the wastefulness of printing a piece of
| paper that I would then immediately throw away after reading, so
| I never implemented it. I still think about it periodically:
| there is something oddly alluring about finding a small piece of
| paper made specifically for me whenever I go to the kitchen in
| the morning. E-ink just doesn't quite feel the same.
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| Yeah, I kind of expected this to be an art project decrying the
| wastefulness of our times, not an actual project.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I think there's a point where it's worth waste in order to
| enjoy life, for example writing on paper instead of typing,
| or eating a burger every now and then. Not using a small
| amount of thermal paper each day is I think a pathological
| over-optimisation
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| Of course, it's just the symbolism of the whole thing. I
| now realise that my comment had a bit too much pathos, and
| could easily be interpreted as looking down on the creator
| of this harmless concept. Companies waste such an insane
| amount of resources on advertising alone, that this fun
| little project can not be seen as morally problematic. It's
| just so on the nose, and together with the current bad
| press surrounding of thermal paper due to health concerns,
| it felt like satire to me.
|
| But thank you for your "writing on paper" example, that was
| a useful one. It made me realise how my comment would have
| to be construed by someone lacking the context I had
| created in my head :)
| serf wrote:
| >Not using a small amount of thermal paper each day is I
| think a pathological over-optimisation
|
| I agree, but OP is judging interest in order to produce a
| product from this concept.
|
| Using a bit of thermal paper each day on a personal basis
| creates negligible impact, agreed -- creating a company
| whose primary profit motive is the sales of equipment that
| produces this waste? That's a different question.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I've been wanting to build something similar, but can't get
| myself to buy a thermal print for just this project. I'll
| probably settle with a "Sunday Newspaper" as a compromise on my
| laserjet printer.
| Instantnoodl wrote:
| You can often times find them for really cheap on the
| secondary market. Like old ones from a restaurant. I got
| quite a few for very cheap over the years. One was 20$ for a
| 80mm one.
|
| So maybe that's a low budget option to tinker for you? Or is
| the problem buying one at all?
| notpushkin wrote:
| I wanna buy a dot-matrix printer for projects like that. Still
| would be wasting paper but at least it won't be toxic and the
| result is usually more aesthetically pleasing IMO.
| adamm255 wrote:
| Like this?? https://aschmelyun.com/blog/getting-my-daily-
| news-from-a-dot...
| smarx007 wrote:
| Epson still makes new ones: https://epson.com/For-
| Work/Printers/Impact-Dot-Matrix/LX-350...
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Oof, barely 2/5 stars on their own website's reviews.
| smarx007 wrote:
| Well, I always read reviews by ignoring all 1-star
| reviews first. Most 1-star reviews are made by
| disgruntled customers to grab customer service attention,
| a practice I detest. For example, one of the 1-star
| reviews says that a printer does not work on Win10 and
| thus is a garbage that was returned. Yeah, about that...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV9lemggOuw sure it works
| on Win10
| jpc0 wrote:
| OKI too
|
| https://www.oki.com/me/printing/products/lineprinters/ind
| ex....
| smarx007 wrote:
| Nice, although looks like the ca. 4500 EUR price for the
| cheapest model is gonna burn a hole in my pocket :)
| jpc0 wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems they have discontinued all their
| smaller models than this... Likely because nobody is
| buying them. I haven't seen a dot Matrix printer in
| person for over a decade.
|
| On the other hand their smaller units are still in
| support till 2027
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Wait a sec. There's no ribbon subscription plan? And they
| sell you high-yield ribbons (lasting many millions of
| characters) for $6 a piece?
|
| The printer even has USB, looks better on your desk than
| the average bulky MFP, and consumes ~ 1W on standby.
| Plus, not having toner particles in the air might be
| better for your health.
|
| If only the print quality and noise level weren't abysmal
| by today's standards, this could easily have been my next
| printer.
| smarx007 wrote:
| > There's no ribbon subscription plan?
|
| Keep it quiet! Don't give them any funny ideas :D
| sleepybrett wrote:
| inks and dyes aren't generally that friendly either.
| pxoe wrote:
| Feels like the vibe from tech scolds in general has shifted
| towards "fun is wasteful". Oh well.
| iamjackg wrote:
| It's not really a scold -- god knows I've wasted a lot of
| stuff for the sake of fun projects, this just happens to be
| past the threshold for me. Not entirely sure why. I think it
| might be because thermal paper feels kinda yucky: it has
| weird chemicals in it, it fades super quickly, and cannot be
| recycled. I would probably feel _slightly_ better doing this
| on regular paper, although like somebody suggested I would
| maybe limit it to a Sunday thing.
| agumonkey wrote:
| we should have miniaturized 80s electrostatic screen for that
| alekratz wrote:
| Hey, I made something like this last year. It wasn't a self-
| contained unit, it was just a receipt printer with a script that
| would run every morning at 8am, getting the forecast, word of the
| day, and quote of the day. The idea was that if something
| important happened that day, I could hold onto that day's slip of
| paper and maybe write a note on it? I dunno, I stopped using
| after a month or so.
| october8140 wrote:
| https://github.com/alibahmanyar/breaklist
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41742210
| sleepybrett wrote:
| This same project has been done several times. Most notably by
| BERG London https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/
|
| This thing came out right on the cusp of IOT as a concept, They
| put a lot of nice effort into design. You could configure it for
| some predefined blocks of content and also some support for rss.
| Was nice to have a little actual pen and paper sodoku every
| morning on the bus.
| mattvr wrote:
| How about showing all the money you spent/earned in the previous
| day, in one personalized receipt?
| graypegg wrote:
| I've wanted to make something like this for a while! Though with
| sudoku puzzles instead of news. My mum goes thru tons of those
| sudoku books, and doesn't want to use her phone for it. Just a
| button to get 1 puzzle, or hold for a roll of 10 or something
| seems like an easy thing to set up.
| CarRamrod wrote:
| Very cool, but FYI, many types of thermal paper contain extremely
| high levels of the chemical BPA.
| macinjosh wrote:
| You're not supposed to eat/lick/consume it.
| ornornor wrote:
| You don't have to. It would seem it also leeches through your
| fingers.
| _joel wrote:
| Good job you can get BPA and Phenol free rolls then.
| ornornor wrote:
| At least for plastic containers that are BPA free, it
| would seem the alternatives are just as toxic but we
| pretend it's not because we have no alternatives.
| CarRamrod wrote:
| Sure, but it's a lot easier to avoid a harmful chemical
| (and protect children from it) when you have been
| informed that it's there.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Perfect for printing Aristotle's guide to comedy and
| passing around to the other monks.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| This reference is right on the tip of my tongue, but I
| can't quite place it.
| ptspts wrote:
| This is a reference to the story of the novel The Name of
| the Rose by Umberto Eco.
| bwoodward wrote:
| I've wanted something like this since the days of TinyPrinter,
| but I just can't justify thermal printing. I'd love to have
| either impact or laser, however.
|
| I mostly want it for lists and recipes, but some other goodies
| would be fun, too.
| figbert wrote:
| Made something similar that is probably my proudest work:
| https://figbert.com/projects/roll-call/
|
| I increasingly have come to believe that it is the screen itself
| that lies at the root of the ills of technology. It brings so
| much benefit--and so much convenience, from its flexibility--but
| it is in its fundamental glow-y rectangular nature that sucks us
| in, crushing our attention, posture, and so much else. Was
| incredibly fun to experiment with something radically different.
|
| Excited to see where things go from here.
| fmajid wrote:
| Nice! I got an Epson TM-m30II PoS printer on a whim, and
| haven't really found a use for it yet, I'll definitely try your
| script.
| Neywiny wrote:
| If this is your website, as a heads up it doesn't work well on
| my browser. Firefox on Android, I believe I have a dark mode
| and the text is still black but on a very dark background.
| paulnpace wrote:
| Apropos.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Are there accessibly priced printers to do actual newspaper or
| magazine style printing? Like if you wanted to be your own small
| publisher.
| landgenoot wrote:
| Newspapers and magazines are pressed, not printed.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Is that available at small scale?
| TheMode wrote:
| You could even 3d print it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spvYDhja1mo (or try finding
| used etching presses). Though there is also the question of
| ink price, and ultimately an industrial printer may work
| better at small scale.
| scraplab wrote:
| Yes: https://www.newspaperclub.com/
|
| Disclaimer: I was one of the founders of the business, but
| left a long time ago. It's still a great service! We print
| a newspaper for our friends and family each year.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Cute project, I can see myself getting into building something
| like it as a hobby project.
|
| Would I pay for one? Honestly, there's no way in the world.
| amanvir_ wrote:
| Hey, I'm the creator of Guten!
|
| Thank you, OP, for posting this, and thanks to the community for
| all your support!
|
| To answer some common questions/comments/concerns:
|
| - Totally agree with the sentiment regarding screens being a big
| problem in today's day and age. The main reason I wanted to make
| Guten was so that I could start my day off reading something on
| paper instead of staring at my phone. It also helps that you
| can't doomscroll on a receipt ;)
|
| - I also love Little Printer - it seemed like such a cool
| product, but I unfortunately never had the chance to purchase one
| before it got discontinued. This is my attempt to bring back some
| of the functionalities in Little Printer that I'd find most
| useful in my day-to-day.
|
| - BPA in thermal paper was a concern of mine as well, but I
| thankfully found some BPA-free thermal paper on Amazon!
| Aloha wrote:
| Epson still makes a two color impact printer as well in this
| form factor.
|
| https://epson.com/For-Work/POS-System-Devices/POS-Printers/T...
|
| I'd be very interested in a "supply your own printer" version
| of this as well - either using these two color printers or
| thermal.
|
| I suspect there isnt a ton of money to be made in selling
| printers, but rather the aggregation services needed to drive
| it. Let people buy a commodity printers, or a variety of them -
| if you use CUPS as an abstraction layer, you can basically run
| anything, and the CUPS turns the actual output device into an
| abstraction.
| afandian wrote:
| A dot matrix at 7am would also solve another problem I have.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| I fondly remember a dot matrix printer that looked a bit
| like a single slot toaster from many decades ago, long
| before the internet and doomscrolling. You sat it above a
| stack of fan fold paper. My memory claims it was called
| Tiger, but what brand it was I have no idea. It was
| incredibly loud but also very fast.
| smarx007 wrote:
| This Tiger? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8I6qt_Z0Cg
| fy20 wrote:
| You can get used impact printers fairly cheaply off eBay.
| They still have a use case in restaurant kitchens - where
| heat doesn't play nicely with thermal paper, and the noise
| alerts you to a new order. In Europe where fiscal printers
| are becoming the norm, it's usually cheaper to buy a new
| printer than repair and recertify it, if it breaks.
|
| Most receipt printers support the ESC/POS protocol, so an
| abstraction isn't really needed.
| nakedrobot2 wrote:
| Yeah it's the bpa more than the waste that would bother me.
|
| Honest question, isn't the bpa free paper just using something
| else than bpa that is unregulated and potentially even worse?
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Depends what you mean by worse: ink is a big problem for
| recycling paper (along polymer-filmed "papers"). Thermal ink
| isn't an exception and contrary to other printer types, it
| need to _cover_ the whole page for the printer to work.
|
| I don't think it's a major health problem if you don't
| consume your daily newspaper after reading.
| CarRamrod wrote:
| >BPA in thermal paper was a concern of mine as well, but I
| thankfully found some BPA-free thermal paper on Amazon!
|
| Cheers to that. A note about buying BPA-free thermal paper on
| the site might be nice, especially for those who plan to have
| children interact with your project.
| fmajid wrote:
| The EU banned BPA in receipt paper 5 years ago. French firm
| Exacompta makes good options in blue and standard white:
| https://www.exacompta.com/en/recherche?search=Thermal
| fmajid wrote:
| French company Exacompta makes a line of BPA-free and
| sustainable thermal receipt paper:
| https://www.exacompta.com/en/recherche?search=Thermal The EU
| banned BPA in receipt paper since 2020, so any European
| supplier should work.
| haarts wrote:
| What? That's fantastic news! I've been uncomfortable handling
| receipts ever since (a long time ago) I learned about BPAs in
| them.
| dt23 wrote:
| Unfortunately it seems it's largely been replaced by
| (equally?) toxic BPS
| https://www.fidra.org.uk/bisphenols/bps-joins-eu-
| candidate-l...
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, interesting read.
|
| > In January 2020, BPA was restricted from use in thermal
| paper, including tickets and receipts, across the EU (3).
| As a result, another bisphenol, Bisphenol-S (BPS), began
| to take its place. In fact, an ECHA survey estimated that
| 61% of all thermal paper would contain BPS as a
| substitute for BPA, despite concerns of BPS being equally
| as harmful (6). Fast forward three years and BPS is now
| recognised as "toxic to reproduction" and a hormone
| disruptor, and has been added to the EU's candidate list
| for Substance of Very High Concern (SVHCs), a common
| first step on the road to restriction (7).
| schoen wrote:
| This thermal paper from Germany which another commenter
| mentioned upthread
|
| https://www.oekobon.de/
|
| claims "no BPA/BPS" and "phenol-free". (Hopefully that
| doesn't turn out to mean that they found something _even
| worse_ to make it out of!)
| forty wrote:
| The mentioned company above (Exacompta) also make some
| without BPS (they say "sans phenol"). No idea what they
| use instead, for all I know it could be worse ^^ but I
| think the made in France is encouraging, we tend to have
| safer norms than EU which itself tends to have safer
| norms than the world.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| do you know why merchants prefer to sell or why customers
| preferred to buy BPA/BPS instead of paper drenched in
| ascorbic acid (vitamin C)?
|
| It even seems easy to make you own DIY version: squeeze
| some lemons, unroll, drench, dry and reroll a properly
| sized roll of normal paper in it.
| mongol wrote:
| I think the idea would work better using an ordinary laser
| printer.
| mikojan wrote:
| Very inconvenient that people are still using Twitter. A presence
| on a more open network that would at least be cross-posted to,
| would be much appreciated.
| 4k93n2 wrote:
| theres definitely something nice about how analog this is, but as
| an anti-screen solution it doesnt make much sense since you would
| have to spend more time using a screen to make sure your tasks
| are filled out the night before. for me anyway there are certain
| tasks i just remember so i mainly only make a note of the things
| i would forget, but with this i would have to write down
| everything
| louismerlin wrote:
| Fun! A friend of mine has been working on something similar:
| https://www.wintermute.org/project/The_Screenless_Office/
| baumschubser wrote:
| As cool as thermal printers are, if you want to have printed news
| from the nyt in the morning, it might be simpler to just, you
| know, subscribe to the newspaper.
| CTOSian wrote:
| those cheap-as-chips thermals are nice, esp some old ones , they
| come with a parallel port - very retro! I used an 80mm one to
| print short todo/lists, they fit well into my 'ancient' pocket
| filofax (4-ring), alas this kind of paper is not echo friendly.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Does this fill your body with BPA like store receipts do for
| workers that touch them a lot? That would be a bad way to start
| each day.
| quartermaster wrote:
| This reminds me of Little Printers from a few years ago:
| https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/
|
| Nice to see the concept is still alive and useful!
| aboardRat4 wrote:
| I'd like to have a program to prepare and typeset PDFs for
| newspapers to be printed out of a gazillion of news sources is
| like to read, very few of which have an rss.
| eggy wrote:
| After my PET 2001 I had purchased in 1977/78, I bought a
| Commodore Vic-20. Using the book, "Practical Astronomy with Your
| Calculator", I wrote a program in Vic BASIC which was the same as
| the PET's to identify the four most prominent moons of Jupiter
| based on their elliptical plane being on edge when viewed from
| Earth. I wanted a way of going on my roof in Brooklyn with my
| small refractor to identify them, so I bought a thermal printer
| and printed out the primitive graphics on a line for a given time
| for the next few hours or so of stargazing. I can't remember the
| printer brand, but it wasn't one of the Apple, Atari, or ZX
| offerings. Good fun. I have to say, I would use my phone nowadays
| or my e-ink tablet instead. Not from being 'sucked in' but merely
| because it would be quick and more accurate and have other uses
| for the same task like Stellarium!
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Very cool looking thing, though I am confused from these comments
| as to whether it will kill me or not.
| phyrex wrote:
| Please be aware that handling thermal paper is super unhealthy:
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5453537/
| smartmic wrote:
| Not necessarily, if you choose a friendly alternative. In
| Germany, we have https://www.oekobon.de/ , I guess there a
| similar offers for other markets. As always, there are
| downsides. In this case, the eco version comes with a blue base
| color.
| mosselman wrote:
| Wow this is great! Danke
| 9dev wrote:
| My daily supermarket uses these and I keep old receipts for
| personal finance evaluation, they definitely do not hold up
| as well as the website advertises. As soon as they get a few
| crinkles, they darken and get really hard to read.
|
| Ideally, we'd all get to online-only receipts and stop the
| paper madness already, but that said, it's still miles ahead
| of ordinary thermopaper.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| There's a reason why a lot of the Costco receipt checkers wear
| nitrile gloves now.
| ck2 wrote:
| thermal receipt paper should not be handled
|
| they contain BPA and BPS which are endocrine-disrupting
|
| https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...
|
| https://www.ecocenter.org/our-work/healthy-stuff-lab/reports...
| Dwedit wrote:
| Totally misread the headline as "Gluten" on first glance.
| Instantnoodl wrote:
| Always happy to see other thermal printer projects :D
|
| I have my own project for using these for TTRPGs: https://sales-
| and-dungeons.app/
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(page generated 2025-01-05 23:01 UTC)