Hello,
I would like to know what types of printers are suitable for the tegra TK1 board.
I have tried with a Lexmark 120 and it worked without any drivers. I am curious
if I can use any printer with this board? I would be particularly interested in a
color printer (something like canon).
There is a lot going on with printers…I can’t answer completely, but there is a generic printer class in USB, so if the printer uses USB and if the printer is a generic class, then it is possible for the printer to work. There may also be additional interfaces for doing things which are not supported even if the basic print function is…for example, there may be maintenance software for determining ink levels which could be custom to the printer even if print function works. CUPS also has more than one way to deal with printers…the IPP protocol is probably the best but may depend on printers with ethernet. So you have to check 1) basic print support, 2) optional support software which may have other requirements, and 3) what interface does the printer support beyond USB, e.g., ethernet, and whether IPP is available on each interface.
I have recently bought the following printer (Download) HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M176n Drivers. It is on USB and it doesn’t work with the TK1 board.
What type of color printers can work with the TK1 board. I am interested mostly in the basic print functionality.
I can’t give a specific printer detail since I have not purchased for a TK1, but the basic printer function (skipping scanner and maintenance type function) should be possible. Generally speaking you’d install CUPS, and install the PPD file describing the printer. The PPD is platform-independent and plain text, it does not require a different version for different architectures. There may be differences between a Mac, Windows, or Linux PPD, but mostly they are similar (Mac and Linux PPD may even be interchangeable). PPD stands for “PostScript Printer Definition”…this originally only applied to PostScript printers (which tend to be close to 100% Linux compatible and are always the best bet, e.g., the Xerox solid ink printers), but this was adopted by other printers as well, so it isn’t just for PostScript printers.
If you were to download a driver and it were to have components specific to Linux on a PC (binary executables are not platform independent), then the PPD would probably be the only truly necessary part of that downloaded driver…this can be installed into CUPS and might arrive separately with a binary download where you throw away everything except the PPD. Some packages related to this you may wish to look at are these (some may be automatically included by installing others…these are a subset of “apt search cups”):
cups
cups-driver-gutenprint (gutenprint is more flexible than the Windows style printer setup)
cups-pdf
foomatic-db-compressed-ppds
foomatic-deb-gutenprint
ghostscript (specific to PostScript, but related to PDF)
gutenprint-doc
printer-driver-gutenprint
system-config-printer-udev
[b]# Specific to HP printers (if you don't have these on your
# current printer try them...also try loading any PPD file
# for your printer from any Linux download):[/b]
hplip
printer-driver-hpcups
printer-driver-hpijs
Note that there are multiple functions and multiple hardware serviced by a single USB connection. The basic printing can be proprietary, or it can be a standardized class. If it is a standardized class, then that PPD file (and perhaps some generic drivers) will be enough. Other functions tend to be for the scanner and maintenance…sometimes “sane” package will work with the scanner as well, but only web interfaces tend to work for maintenance.
If you get a printer which runs on wired ethernet your odds of it working also go up. There are multiple protocols for printer manangement. Among those the “IPP” printer protocol is highly portable. If you pick up a printer capable of ethernet via IPP, then your odds also go up a lot that the printer will work (I’ve found that to some degree printers supporting IPP on ethernet may also be more portable on USB…but this is just coincidence).