Thermal label printer

N

newton

We have a Brother PT-2430PC label printer that we use to print product labels. They are small (about 10 mm x 20 mm) and fairly water / heat / human resistant. The label maker has to be manually plugged into one of our Windows computers, information put into an Excel sheet (taken from a MySQL database on our FreeBSD server, then the program that came with the labeler is used to read the Excel sheet. I'd like to make this more streamlined. The problem is, Google searches only result in effort, and half-successes. I'd like to get this working on our server. Someone else here has suggested we just install our old version of Windows Server 2003 on an old desktop PC we have and be done with it. Please, please give me a better way that doesn't involve another server or Windows OS.

Some notes:
  1. We need variable length labels, that's why we use the continuous feed type labeler.
  2. We need it to do the printing and cutting from a template of some sort so that we can just send it the data from the database.
  3. I want it to run from our FreeBSD server, not someone's laptop or another computer we put together to run Windows.

Wish list:
  1. Print a small 2D barcode on there and have some way to read it back.
 
There is a partial ptouch driver. No port yet.

Combining that with ghostscript would allow creating the bitmap and dumping it to the printer. Barcodes could be included, there are barcode PostScript fonts. Limited resolution on the printer might complicate them. This will be a development project, taking time to get the printer driver, to see if it can handle variable-length labels, to write the PostScript code, and to test everything.

If the printer supports text printing, writing a program to print directly to it might be easier. A quick check on Brother's web site showed that they do not make that information easily available.
 
I found this, and have sent an email to the developer, maybe he can provide some more insight: http://apz.fi/blabel/ Or, maybe someone can see from that source code how to make it work. (It seems he can't get the cutter to work)?

Also, I was taking a look through openprinting.org, but it seems to work backward. It's like you have to choose a printer and then see if it works. Is there a way to tell it what you need (my water/heat/human resistant, approximate size, etc) and have it search for a supported printer that works? Or could someone just recommend one that will work and has enough information for someone with basic programming and FreeBSD usage skills to implement?
 
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