automatic printing

[justfinethanks]

first off thanks for this project - it's awesome!

I'm able to take pics using the gpio button press - and then I can print the cartoonified images fine using lp from command line using the format from workflow.py (lp -o landscape -c cartoonX.png) but for some reason they aren't being printed on the gpio button press

i'm new to python - where's a good place to start looking for the problem?

thanks again!

[danmacnish]

awesome, nice work! Are you using a serial printer? The code isn't set up for USB printers, but it can be done.

If you are using a serial printer, have you enabled the GPIO serial through raspi-config?

[adammm9]

I also ran into a similar problem, I am using a serial printer and have enabled the GPIO serial and I can also print from the command line but when I run the program everything seems to work it saves the picture and creates a file with the cartoon image but nothing prints from the printer. If you have any ideas on what could be going wrong that would be awesome

[justfinethanks]

Thanks for getting back! I'm using serial on the printer - the tiny thermal with ttl serial.

I currently have a workaround in place to watch the folder using inotifywait and print using lp when a cartoon*.png file is created in the images directory.

[adammm9]

@justfinethanks anyway you could share the code you used as a workaround? I have been looking at this project for a while and still can't get it to print automatically. Thank you

[justfinethanks]

@adammm9 sure thing!

i made a file called "printWatcher.sh" in the pi home folder that uses inotifywait, and then added it to run on startup using crontab.
("crontab -e" from command line to open the file and then adding "@reboot bash /home/pi/printWatcher.sh" to the file.)

printWatcher.sh

#!/bin/bash
inotifywait -m /home/pi/cartoonify/cartoonify/images/ -e create |
while read path action file; do
case "$file" in
 (*cartoon*) 
echo "Found Cartoon - Waiting for write to finish..."
sleep 1
echo "Slept, Printing ->"
lp -o landscape -c /home/pi/cartoonify/cartoonify/images/"$file"
echo "Printed."
esac
done

sidenote: this script only prints on file creation - i think also a good idea to try to add "-e modify" as well as "-e create" on the inotifywait. I ran into an issue where the files were being overwritten instead of created due to the numerical number scheme so they weren't printing until I cleared the directory. I also have it sleeping for one second after the file is created to finish writing - there's probably a slicker way to achieve this built into inotifywait

[adammm9]

@justfinethanks Thanks for the help i got it working!