Guten: A Tiny Newspaper Printer
amanvir.com
amanvir.com
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.
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 :)
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.
So maybe that's a low budget option to tinker for you? Or is the problem buying one at all?
I'm seeing that the team that owns this customer experience doesn't ensure they get enough positive reviews to break out of the noise (or fix the UX that makes installing this printer on Windows 10 difficult). Either way, it tells me this company doesn't make an effort.
On the other hand their smaller units are still in support till 2027
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.
Keep it quiet! Don't give them any funny ideas :D
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!
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.
But thank you for the link, it's a long time since I'd heard that.
I've just asked ChatGPT to find it but first it just gave me information about tractor feed printers. Then I asked if there was such a printer called Tiger; it then found the same Eye of the Tiger video!
ChatGPT is a bit like a literal minded child: you have to keep varying the question to get it to give the right answer. I at last remembered that it was called Paper Tiger (of course) and asked ChatGPT about that and it found it:
"Yes, there was a dot matrix printer named the Paper Tiger, produced by Integral Data Systems (IDS). Models like the IDS 440 and Paper Tiger 460 were designed for use with continuous fan-fold paper, utilizing a tractor-feed mechanism to handle such paper efficiently. Internet Archive
These printers were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, especially among users of systems like the Apple II series. They were known for their durability and compatibility with various computer systems of that era. SETI@home
For more detailed information, you can refer to the Paper Tiger 460 manual, which provides insights into its features and specifications. Internet Archive"
Most receipt printers support the ESC/POS protocol, so an abstraction isn't really needed.
Honest question, isn't the bpa free paper just using something else than bpa that is unregulated and potentially even worse?
I don’t think it’s a major health problem if you don’t consume your daily newspaper after reading.
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.
> 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).
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you deal with receipts many times in a day you should be wearing gloves!
Nice to see the concept is still alive and useful!
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.
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.
I have my own project for using these for TTRPGs: https://sales-and-dungeons.app/
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...
I mostly want it for lists and recipes, but some other goodies would be fun, too.
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...
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.
Would I pay for one? Honestly, there's no way in the world.