Dot Matrix Wireless Card
I have always been fascinated by old printing technologies, and recently found a used Epson dot matrix printer for cheap online, and decided it would be awesome to add to my collection!
When I opened it up I started to get even more excited, it has breakout pins inside that expose all the same connections that are in the parallel port on the back! In theory, one could make a card that plugs in and connects to the network, perhaps powered by a little ESP8266, and exposes itself as a networked printer...
I've never had good luck with printers, so my first goal is simply to wire up the ESP8266, and configure it to host a little webpage where you can go type in text and see it printed.
Then I can either make use of open-source software that already offers the IPP functionality, orrrr I could potentially wire it up to my homelab with a simple API. I could hook it up to print out errors in my homelab, perhaps integrate it with the NTFY push notification library so it can receive notifications, or just set up a little service where I can type reminders into it while I'm out and about, and come home to see them printed out on the printer! So many ideas are possible...
