i need an app of mine to be able to connect to a portable printer via Bluetooth. Kinda like the system police here in India have. They send parking ticket-receipt/any other ticket-receipt from a blackberry phone to a printer and take out hard copy of the receipt. Is this at all possible in Android?? I have been trying to search on the net but haven't been able to come up with anything good.... Any suggestions?
Yes its possible in android. You can refer this sites for bluetooth coding idea
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html
http://developer.android.com/resources/samples/BluetoothChat/index.html
Also there you can refer this for how bluetooth print app is made
Bluetooth Printer issue in android
Hope it helps
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Is this possible? I checked out printing to an AirPrint printer from Android, but it was closed for "not being a question" (I don't really know why, it seemed like a legitimate question to me) and the only answer to it totally doesn't answer the question.
What I need is a way to print to a wireless printer on the same network (possibly intranet) via my Android device, using code. If there's no Android official SDK for it, is there a custom library anyone knows of or a possible workaround to it? Possibly using AirPrint; if PrintBot can do it, there's no reason why there shouldn't be a corresponding hack for it.
Yes, it is possible to print to an AirPrint printer from Android.
There are a number of printer apps available that claim to support AirPrint.
As of my experience they don't work very well unfortunately.
In general it's a good idea to use the Android Print API. Job transmission and potential rendering should be done by appropriate printer drivers.
In case of AirPrint the driver could send a PDF straight to the printer. If you don't want to use Androids Printservice you can use my ipp-client.
i need to find a way to print file/content/.. programmatically from my application to blue-tooth printer (or) printer connected with USB.
Could anybody give me a idea? any reference will be helpful.
is there any open source api available for printing in android?
Are you looking to print to a big desktop printer or a receipt printer?
If you're looking for a receipt printer, Star Micronics has an Android SDK that you can freely download here: http://www.starmicronics.com/support/SDKDocumentation.aspx.
It covers USB, bluetooth, and ethernet printing.
This SDK has a really nice sample app that lets you test and customize a lot of printer functions to see them in action. Each function is documented in the source code. The commands and their parameters are also available in the app itself as a quick on screen reference which is convenient. On top of all that, it's well documented.
If you use their SDK, you can send plain text to the printer along with commands. The API handles converting the data into what the printer can understand.
You need to create Connection between your application & bluetooth printer.
Look at to my answer here.
I want to bring a functionality to my Android app, that users can connect from mobile device (mobile or tablet) via USB / Wi-Fi / Bluetooth and can take out the prints.
I search over the Internet but not finding any proper solution which is achieving results.
Looking for your help / guide further to decide our Android Application scope.
Thanks in advance !
Star Micronics has an SDK for Android printing via Bluetooth, WiFi, and USB. You can download it here: http://www.starmicronics.com/support/SDKDocumentation.aspx.
This SDK has a really nice sample app that lets you test and customize a lot of printer functions to see them in action. Each function is documented in the source code. The commands and their parameters are also available in the app itself as a quick on screen reference which is convenient. On top of all that, it's well documented.
Basically, you can send plain text to the printer along with commands. The API handles converting the data into what the printer can understand.
Mobile devices/tablets have usb ports so is there a way to send the print job directly via USB if connected to the printer?
Also, is it an ok solution in terms of simplicity and reliability to have the android device to create a 2d graphic of text, upload it to an application server via wifi, notify a desktop with a printer to do the job with the graphic.
Someone suggested to me to use a wireless (wifi) printer but really I need to set this up for a thermal printer to print receipts from my app.
If there are other better methods please share them. Thanks.
Here is the options for printing from the Android Device.
Thermal Printers - In market no of thermal printer are available like EPSON, Casio, STAR or Chinese printers. These printers have their own SDK. By simply import that sdk in project you can print from the application.
Connectivity is the main thing in using those printers. Every user have different kind of needs. So we can connect with thermal printers via USB, Bluetooth, WiFi, COM Port 232, Ethernet.
Also one more thing is you can install your printer drivers and CUPS on Server and directly send the printing request to the server and server send it to printer IP. This feature allow you to print form anywhere no issue of slow connection like we face in BT and WiFi.
Google Cloud Printers - In this case you have to registered your printer on Google printers and through Google Cloud printer API's we can print from the Android Device.
My personal opinion is to go for the Thermal printer as i have used the EPSON, Casio and some other and they are fairly easy to use and satisfy all our needs.
For the Developers here is one sample how to deal with thermal printer
How to print from the Thermal Printer in Android?
I think that you have two main approaches:
Google Cloud print system -> but there is no thermal printer that supports the protocol so the printer must be connected to some computer (win/mac)
Try to use some bluetooth thermal printer as discussed in this question.
Personally, I think the best way is doing by bluetooth printer...
I actually found out that STAR Micronics support android printing on certain models (there are quite a few models supported).
STAR give you the option of using the WiFi or Bluetooth to connect, I think Ethernet is also supported but you have to have certain models of the Ethernet adapter inserts that plug into the back of your thermal printer.
Here is the link:
http://www.star-m.jp/eng/dl/dl02_06_02spsd.htm
The reason this is so difficult to find is that it is not listed on the other star micronics websites (only this japanese one) and you have to manually go to the Downloads section to see it.
In case the link gets broken the Android SDK you want is called:
StarIO_Android_V1000a
If you do a google search you should find it.
The link posted above to the Japanese site is broken. The latest version of the Star Android printer SDK can be found here: http://www.starmicronics.com/support/SDKDocumentation.aspx
A lan/wifi printer should work.However you should handle data flow.If you have a desktop app then things change.Do you have a desktop app or not?
I need to connect to printer through Bluetooth. Is there a way to do it. Printer I use is CMP10BT.
Thanks in advance.
Peerke is correct. The printer uses rather common ESC/POS standard; you should be able to either find some Java library for this or write your own code to output to printer.
I did similar things for Zebra (CPCL standard) and Blackberry (again, Bluetooth and Java) and found it simple.
There is a Bluetooth api in android. (http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/wireless/bluetooth.html)
With the Bluetooth api you can connect to any Bluetooth device you have including printers. The problem is, that you need to know how to speak to your printer. You have to figure that out. Besides that, I don't see any problem why you can't do this.