This idea really resonates. Like others have mentioned, there's a unique power to a physical artifact that a digital to-do list just can't replicate.
I went down this exact rabbit hole a while back, trying to bridge the gap between my digital planning and physical, actionable "tickets." The setup part can be a bit of a pain, especially getting a printer reliably online and talking to it from different apps and services.
This is the exact problem I built Printercow¹ to solve (author here!). It's a small service that lets you turn any thermal printer into a networked API endpoint with a one-line install command on a Raspberry Pi. The idea is to handle all the backend plumbing so you can focus on the fun part—triggering prints from Zapier, a script, or your own app to create a system just like the author's.
Happy to answer any questions about the setup!
I am using Printercow for another project of mine where I developed a POS-system where many thousands receipts need to be printed. This was one of the motivations. AI was kind of a afterthought. :P
Thank you for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate you sharing your perspective, especially about the compliance requirements. You're right, and you're not alone - many others in the thread have expressed similar concerns about the SaaS approach. After taking some time to reflect, I've decided to pivot towards a dual-track solution:
1. A free, self-hostable version for businesses with compliance requirements or those who prefer to maintain their own infrastructure
2. A cloud version for users who want a managed solution
I'll be working on both versions over the next few weeks. :)
Valid question. Printercow is aiming for a plug-and-play scenario where you can use whatever thermal printer you want with an extensive html-like template engine.
I really like the proposal from black_puppydog here. Free forever self-host and a pay-per-print in case you want to have support or don't want to hassle with the infrastructure. Like Coolify is doing it.
Speaks nothing against this - though give it some time to leave the alpha phase. Hosting is super easy using Docker and e.g. Coolify as PaaS right now.
Not fully decided on the payment yet. Thinking about going the Coolify route with self-hosted and cloud option or with pay what you use (seems more software tending to this one). Happy for any feedback!
Raspberry Pi Installation:
- Open Raspberry Pi Imager
- Select Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32bit)
--> Lite is without desktop environment and saves some Memory on the PI :)
- Start the Pi and enter:
curl -fsSL https://printercow.com/pi/install.sh -o install.sh \
&& chmod +x install.sh \
&& sudo ./install.sh
Totally get the resentment. However, I'm particularly excited about the benefits this could bring, especially for people like my grandma with dementia. She could say, "Print my shopping list," or "Can you write down my son's phone number?" Only thing missing for now is smarter home assistant devices as Alexa is too dumb to handle such requests. :/
Thanks so much!
Elixir was on my list but decided for Fastify (Node v22), Postgres and Vue3 in the end as these are the things I am more familiar with. :)
The command is on the Printercow homepage - though proper docs are coming by end of the week.
When it comes to regular ink/laser printers: yes. When it comes to thermal printers, you are normally left alone with just the ESC/P protocol, plus most printers handle the commands in a different way. The way I solved this issue is to write an image buffer directly to the printer, circumventing the protocol and always ensuring that prints look the same regardless of the printer.
In case you don't want to create an account, you can just comment with your prompts and I will enter them myself. You can watch let it print on https://twitch.tv/printercow then. :)
(¹) https://printercow.com