Develop Reference

Printing from Android over AirPrint?

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.

Rhomobile, BLE112 Bluetooth device - iOS and android app

I have been searching for a while now and decided to post a question here to see if someone had already traveled down this specific road.
I am developing a bluetooth enabled device, using the Bluegiga BLE112 chip. They announce this chip to be easily used with iOS devices (and this was our main reason for choosing it)
The device will need to communicate with an App, that we need to be developed for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. Due to this need, I've decided to use Rhomobile, as it seems to be the only one that supports developing BT apps for iOS without having to develop further plugins.
I only need to send small messages (like commands, small strings) and sometimes a bigger file to the device's internal memory.
On Rhomobile's BT documentation, they state that for iOS it is only possible to comunicate between iOS devices ( i'm thinking that they say this because of the MiFi limitations imposed by Apple, but that using Bluegigas chip are not a problem...)
My question is:
Since Bluegiga's documentation has examples of devices communicating with iOS using their chip, i should be able to develop using Rhomobile and not suffer from the limitation stated above. I wanted to be as sure as possible before making my company spend money ordering the chips and development board and what not..
Has anyone tried this, is my thinking missing something?
Thank you all for your time.
Daniel

Good Question, I think I can understand the reason for your confusion.
The main reason is many people/products/frameworks does not clearly mention if they are talking about Bluetooth Classic or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
These are both 2 different things and even thougfh they are called "Bluetooth" one cannot talk to the other.
(Some devices can be both Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy, which allows it to connect to either types)
Ok now comming to your Question :
THE bluegiga dongle is BLE
The Rhomobile is refering to the Bluetooth Classic version of the API.
On iOS the BLE APIs are open to applications, but Classic is limited on iOS , one way for Apps to use Classic Bluetooth on iOS is via the Gamekit APIs but that is possible only when talking with iOS devices, so it wont connect to another Android or Win device that is also Classic.
Needless to say with BLE APIs you cannot connect to calssic anyways.
The bluegiga examples are BLE examples, and apple also has good documentation and examples / samples on how to use BLE so yes it is easy to build a device and app using BLE on iOS.
There is nothing special abut any particular chip yo ucan use any BLE chip - there are many vendors today.
BUT Android (and I guess Windows as well) does not yet have BLE APIs for applications to use :( (Bit I think is is comming soon :))
So I hope this clears things up a bit.

Android driver development

I am planning to create a system for shops. I am going to use an android tablet and a receipt printer. The printer I am planning to use does not support Android.
My question is:
Can I create a driver for the printer?
Do I need to know anything about the printer such as (chip or any other electronic stuff)
Is it difficult to create the driver?
Thanks a lot

I would try to avoid this setup. The words shop and receipt sound as if some reliability and user friendliness are required. Today, communication with printers is mostly bi-directional because they send all kinds of information back. Processing at least some of these (toner low, out of paper) would certainly help your users. Apart from that, reverse engineering a specific printer's protocol isn't necessarily fun, especially should you not be experienced with respect to printer protocols. Also, low cost printers delegate all kinds of logic to the driver because this lowers the costs for the device. I would not rely on related documentation being available.
A good indication whether the printer of your choice is suitable at all may be if it's supported by some open source printing framework. Such a framework could also be your first address for answers to related questions.
Just my two cents.

I believe that the best choice would be to firstly try some open-source printer software which might work with this printer. If any open-source software doesn't work, you would get a good understanding after going over the open-source driver for another similar printer.
You would not be needing to know information about the chip and other electronic stuff to write a driver. Although, you would need a documentation of the printer which says the protocol the printer follows.
I don't think that it should be really tough writing a driver for a printer, although it depends on how much flexible driver you want to write. If you want to write a driver which just fulfils the specialized jobs you want it to do, the driver should not be tough to write although the driver could not then be extended beyond the requirements of your application and not used for any generic use. If you want to write a generic driver which can be used to print anything, then it might not be that easy.

Are you absolutely positively have to use the specific printer model? Because if not, you may want to take a look at Google Cloud Print. You will need to have a compatible app for Android(and there's plenty of those, the list is available here) and a cloud ready printer(again, there's many of them, you can find the list here), or a conventional printer, there is a way to connect those as well.

steps for bluetooth printer for Android

I am interested to develop bluetooth printer app for Android so please guide me how to begin
it?
Is there any free third party library for that ?

Star Micronics has an SDK for Android printing via Bluetooth (as well as ethernet, wifi, and USB). You can download it here: http://www.starmicronics.com/support/SDKDocumentation.aspx.
You can't print natively from Android at this point in time so the alternate solutions are a 3rd party API, finding a 3rd party printing app, or writing your own printer support.
In my experience, it's best to use an API and not an external app. The biggest reason is you get total control over printer behavior. Using an external app is limiting because you can't customize your print outs the way you want to. Writing a printer driver is too hard because you need to intimately know the device for perfect support... the API gives you full control over the device without all the frustration of re-engineering the whole process.
The Star SDK I linked you to has an API and a really nice sample app that lets you test and customized printer functions to see them in action. It's well documented too.
If you choose this way, you can send plain text to the printer along with commands. The API handles converting the data into what the printer can understand.

is it possible to print from adobe air android app to a wireless printer?

hi im trying to make a POS app for android using adobe air mobile .
i have an epson thermal printer connected to a Wifi router.
i have learned that printjob won't work with the mobile apps
Please give me some solution for this

I have seen people go about this in three different ways:
Use an API from a printer manufacturer
Use a 3rd party printing app
Write your own driver
From experience, #1 is by far the best option. It's much better to use an API because it allows you full customization over print outs (font, special device commands, etc) and it reduces the amount of time you need to spend researching and coding.
3rd party printing apps are limited in customization. They might be good for a full size office or home printer, but POS printing usually has more specific requirements and often needs a level of customization these apps can't offer. Writing a driver is hard because there are so many things you need to intimately know about the printer: how to establish communication, get status, format the receipt, and more. It's like spending months to reinvent the wheel because a well-constructed API handles all of this for you.
I highly recommend you check out Star printers. They have a great Android SDK with a printing API that's full of samples and it's heavily documented. http://www.starmicronics.com/support/sdkdocumentation.aspx