McPrinter

A command line utility for printing to WiFi-based ESC/POS receipt printers.

Sends text and images over TCP to thermal receipt printers. Supports smart argument resolution -- pass text strings, text files, or images in any order and mcprinter figures out what to do.

Install

make

This builds the mcprint binary in the project directory.

To install to ~/.local/bin:

make install

Configuration

make install copies .env.example to ~/.config/mcprint/config.env on first run. Edit it with your printer's IP:

PRINTER_HOST=192.168.1.100
PRINTER_PORT=9100

# Printer width in dots. Common values for 80mm paper:
#   384 = 203 DPI
#   512 = 256 DPI
#   576 = 300 DPI
PRINTER_WIDTH=576

A local .env in the working directory is also loaded and takes precedence. Flags --host and --port override both.

Usage

# Print text
./mcprint "Hello, world!"

# Print from stdin
echo "Order #1234" | ./mcprint

# Print a text file
./mcprint soul.txt

# Print an image (resized to full paper width, dithered to B&W)
./mcprint logo.png

# Print image on top, text below
./mcprint logo.png "Thanks for your order!"

# Print image on top, text file below
./mcprint logo.png soul.txt

# Override connection
./mcprint --host 192.168.1.50 --port 9100 "Hello"

Argument Resolution

Arguments are resolved left to right:

• If an arg is an existing file with an image extension (.png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp), it's queued as an image
• If an arg is an existing file with any other extension, its contents are read as text
• Otherwise, the arg is treated as a literal text string
• If stdin is piped, it's read as text

Print order: images first, then text, then auto-cut.

Supported Printers

Targets any ESC/POS compatible WiFi receipt printer that accepts raw TCP connections (typically port 9100). Tested with:

• Volcora 80mm Thermal Receipt Printer