I Invited Strangers to Message Me Through a Receipt Printer

I don’t know, I kind of like having a place for some people to anonymously vent (as more than a few have).

In my case, I will probably try to use my receipt printer as a zine production line. The nature of the format inspires some great article writing ..

Shame they didn't bother to invest any time in making sure their expensive devices wouldn't end up as paperweights. Seriously, it's infuriating that they were lauded for the creativity of this project but it's fallen to hobbyists and volunteers to engineer an entire suite of software to make this dead hardware work again, just because the initial developers were either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too restricted by bean-counters to develop open source (or at least self-hostable) software for these machines. You can't even change the server address of these things without hardware flashing and risking bricking your hub.

> live in city

> breathe vehicle exhaust and tire dust everyday

> drink alcohol

> drive to my desk job

> live on ultra processed food

> salt and sugar for a treat

> better not touch this piece of paper - for my health

> open another Monster energy drink (tm). I can sleep when I’m dead.

For some reason I find it really funny to potentially be getting printed out adverts for shady boner pills or singles near you.

I worked as a cashier for years in my teens and twenties though, so it’s probably already in my blood.

this was like 20 years ago, still makes me shudder after i learned about the BPA stuff

"In the 2010s public health agencies in the EU,[81][82][83] US,[84][85] Canada,[86] Australia[87] and Japan as well as the WHO[12] all reviewed the health risks of BPA, and found normal exposure to be below the level currently associated with risk."

If it has some health effects, they've been incredibly hard to actually pin down..

You just can't polymerize plastics without a plasticizer. It's just not allowed by chemistry. No free lunch.

If you want something that's not going to leach huge amounts of plasticizers onto your fingers, use an inkjet or a laser toner printer or a laser marking machine.

They don't really make those for receipts, though, because fingers tend to be wet and powdered toner is expensive.

There’s a basic rate limiter set up to prevent misuse, and a character limit, but beyond that I just kind of wanted to see what people would send.

It’s been surprisingly chill, and I’ve only had to handle a few nonsensical text dumps or garbage messages.

I connected it to my linux server and without any drivers I can print with e.g.: `echo "Hello World!" >> /dev/usb/lp0`.

It also supports bar/QR codes.

For instance, TM-T88V printers can do more but cost around 3x as much as the one I got, a TM-T88IV which is the older version. Not perfect, but beats the like $200 price tag brand new.

(scroll to "Use alternative receipt paper": "Companies that offer phenol-free alternatives")

But knowing the things that pop up on HN, something like remotely massaging someone via a receipt printer is totally believable.

I’m actually hoping someone reads this and creates a remote massaging receipt printer.

Also if you buy a pack of BPA-free paper rolls, you get a crazy amount of pictures for $20. Granted you'll have to re-roll them into smaller rolls to fit the camera.