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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > CHROMEBOOK MEGATHREAD
 
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D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

 Got a printing conundrum I am trying to figure out.

I have an IDPRT SP410 thermal printer. It has no drivers/is not one of the options for Chromebook printer setup. I typically use it on my desktop but sometimes I work in the living room from the chromebook while watching my kids. What I would like to be able to do is plug the printer into my chromebook via USB and using chrome remote desktop print through windows. Like my mouse and keyboard inputs are being passed to the remote windows machine so why couldn't it pass the USB connection to my printer so the remote windows machine thinks its plugged into it and printing from that machine actually prints from the thermal printer connected to my chromebook in the living room. I hope that makes sense. Like for example I have my barcode scanner connected to my chromebook via bluetooth and when I scan something the desktop computer picks it up through chrome remote desktop.

I can just keep the printer in my office and work on the desktop through CRD but then I have to walk to my office and back every time I need to grab a label I printed, which is often. Is there a way to do this or if not force this printer to be recognized by chrome locally?

D-Pad fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jun 5, 2022

* # ¿ Jun 5, 2022 19:43
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# ¿ Jan 15, 2025 08:25
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D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

Atomizer posted:

For as infrequently as I print nowadays, I had to do so yesterday and it was a huge pain in the rear end, partially due to Chrome and partially due to the retirement of GCP. The good thing is that ChromeOS is mature enough so that it can now recognize modern printers. The bad thing is that Chrome appears not to have mature printing options, i.e. I couldn't set print margins or rotation so it kept cutting off part of the shipping label I was trying to print (including the scannable codes that needed to be readable.) It used to be easier when we could just set up a print server on a Windows machine using GCP....

This...is basically the opposite of what I described above. It sounds weird to want the opposite to work, where you have a printer in your living room instead of the office where most people would prefer it. I mean I guess you don't want to leave your kids for the few seconds it presumably takes to run and go grab a printout, but are you really printing that much, like every few minutes or something? Because no, otherwise there's no way to do what you're describing here unfortunately.

That's...not how it works. Using remote control software like CRD isn't passing through the hardware connections from one device to the other, it's just sending the input over the network connection. A KVM switch is actually connecting the devices to each system, for contrast.

I mean there actually might be software that would run on Windows/Linux that would allow you to access hardware on one system virtually over a network, but that doesn't apply in your case because your printer doesn't have ChromeOS drivers. (I guess if it has Linux drivers you might then be in business, but that's way more effort than I can invest, and than you should invest. Just print to your office and burn a few calories running over to grab the labels once an hour or so.

I figured this was the answer, but yeah I am scanning products and printing barcodes so I'd literally be making the trip every 45 seconds or so. Oh well I was planning on upgrading this printer before too long anyway so I'll just get one that has wifi networking capability.

* # ¿ Jun 6, 2022 07:37
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D-Pad
Jun 28, 2006

Atomizer posted:

But can you like print a batch of them and then go every 5-10 minutes? Or watch the kids in the office? Or work in the office and set up a little camera in the other room to keep an eye on them? Or hook up the printer to a laptop and maybe put them on a little cart that you could temporarily set up in the family room if you really wanted to work there?

Any of those would be more realistic than the reverse-remote printing scenario.

That last one, hook up the printer to a laptop, is what I am trying to do. It's just a little handheld printer so I want to connect it to my chromebook in the living room and print. Since that printer model is not an option when setting up a printer in chromebook and I don't see any chromebook drivers (does chromebook even have drivers?) on the manufacturer site I was hoping I could get it working through the remote connection somehow.

Looks like that isn't possible. All good. Thanks for your help.

* # ¿ Jun 6, 2022 19:13
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > CHROMEBOOK MEGATHREAD