catprinter

GitHub

Go library for "cat printer" style mini thermal printers (58mm width, 384 dots). These printers use a proprietary protocol, not ESC/POS.

Features

  • BLE connection via tinygo.org/x/bluetooth
  • PD01 proprietary protocol (0x5178 header, CRC8 checksum)
  • Text printing (rendered as bitmap)
  • Device scanning with printer filtering

Usage

# Scan for printers
./catprinter scan --printers

# Print text
./catprinter print --addr D1:08:04:1E:E3:B8 --text "Hello!"

# Custom font size
./catprinter print --addr D1:08:04:1E:E3:B8 --text "Hi" --size 80

Install

go get github.com/rhnvrm/catprinter

Background

These cheap thermal printers from China don't use standard protocols. I reverse-engineered the 0x5178 protocol to make them usable from Go.

← Projects