thermal printing
/ projects involving receipt printers

Inspiration : Screenless office - Feed
Inspiration : Screenless office - Feed
A “artistic operating system” made up of printers and a barcode scanner. http://screenl.es/

The Screenless Office
The Screenless Office
The Screenless Office is a system for working with media and networks without using a pixel-based display. It is an artistic operating system. The office presents a radically alternative form of everyday human interaction with media. It is constructed using free/libre/open hard- and software components, especially for print, databases, web-scraping and tangible interaction. Currently, it exists as a working prototype with software “bureaus” which allow a user to read and navigate news, web sites and social media entirely with the use of various printers for output and a barcode scanner for input. While our existing software allows for interesting new ways of consuming media, we are currently working to expand the system to make it capable of publishing content and thereby, enabling a provocative possibility for active participation in contemporary social life.
Diversity | The Screenless Office
Human Interface Guidlines (HIG), Material Design, User Interface Standards: terms for these standardized official forms of screen-based presentation, are all based on the old modernist idea that it is possible and indeed commendable to try to design in a way that is universal. While this principle has roots in a socialist idea of creating products for everyone, it is easily coopted by large companies that want to centralize control and leverage monopoly power. We can admit that some of these systems are visually quite attractive and indeed helpful in dealing with complexity, but we feel it is time to make a plea for a diversity of perspectives and situations. We believe that it is imperitive to try to create interfaces that might reflect various aspects of social identity and personality: gender, sexuality, race, class, subcultures. We want to work towards an interface culture for diverse, utterly unique people who all have correspondingly various needs and desires such that they might some day have interfaces that reflect their situation. We cannot build all of these systems but we hope to make a case that maybe they should exist.

Why | The Screenless Office
Why | The Screenless Office
Removing the screen is a radical gesture denying conformity to the dominating forces of contemporary interface culture. By getting rid of the display, we force digital text and images back into the old conventions of print culture. While this might have a superficial, nostalgic appeal, more importantly, it puts us into the role of acting like amateur media archeologists, investigating the history of modern visual, literary and bureaucratic systems both technical and social. At the same time, by taking newer forms of digital media and packing it into the old container of print, we open up a new experimental field of analog-digital hybrid forms. Our goal is to discover and invent novel ways of living in the digital world which might be more informal, expressive and embodied.
By calling this creation an "Artistic Operating System", we assert that it should be unique and personal, even peculiar in its way of representing and interfacing with the rest of the media world. In this sense, it is freed from the implicit social requirement that new technological projects conform to standard principles of progress, universality and efficiency. There's no need to claim to be the "Next Big Thing" or to even suggest that anyone, other than the creators of this device, should use it. However, its existence serves as a polemic for a more diverse, inclusive and participatory interface culture where new technological systems might be judged for their poetic qualities instead of marketability.

microprinter / FrontPage
microprinter / FrontPage

3242944498_5bd7d50006_o
3242944498_5bd7d50006_o

8CDF0A22-533A-45F0-9022-33389B217EAD

11 August 2025

LingDong-/r1b
LingDong-/r1b
A thermal-printer-oriented, 1-bit graphics rasterizer for 2D and 3D

dalpil/structure-aware-dithering: Experiments with structure-aware, error diffusion dithering algorithms, and other ways to improve beyond Floyd-Steinberg.
dalpil/structure-aware-dithering: Experiments with structure-aware, error diffusion dithering algorithms, and other ways to improve beyond Floyd-Steinberg.
Experiments with structure-aware, error diffusion dithering algorithms, and other ways to improve beyond Floyd-Steinberg. - dalpil/structure-aware-dithering

GitHub - dalpil/epson-multi-tone: Multi-tone printing on TM-T88V, TM-T88VI, TM-T88VII and other thermal receipt printers from Epson
GitHub - dalpil/epson-multi-tone: Multi-tone printing on TM-T88V, TM-T88VI, TM-T88VII and other thermal receipt printers from Epson
Multi-tone printing on TM-T88V, TM-T88VI, TM-T88VII and other thermal receipt printers from Epson - dalpil/epson-multi-tone

