Inexpensive Server for Google Cloud Print

WHy can’t the Pi have wifi…it’s got USB ports, and can be used with hubs as well.

I think you can find one that ships from US, but maybe not at that price.

There are competing products. I just linked one that is popular/cheap. I was looking at these in October to use with my projector. At the time that particular model was 2x the current price. I’ll look at them again when this old PC kicks the bucket.

I’d go for whatever has custom roms available (I’m assuming those are available now).

You would need a powered usb hub along with a wifi dongle. From what I understand it gets pretty finicky.

Grab one of these Android PCs from FastTech. You can even plug them directly into the HDMI port of your TV and work off of it.

http://www.fasttech.com/products/1110/10000477/1050001-mk-808-dual-core-16ghz-android-jellybean-411-mini-

or

http://www.fasttech.com/products/1110/10000272/1031000-mk-802-ii-3rd-generation-mini-android-404-pc-4gb

I haven’t read that yet but i’m still new to researching the Pi, however because the Pi has two USB ports. One for wifi dongle, one for the printer to connect to.

I’m surprised there aren’t routers with USB ports that can run Chrome by now . . . .

You can make a print server with a Raspberry Pi

https://gigaom.com/2014/07/02/need-a-low-cost-google-cloud-print-server-try-a-35-raspberry-pi/

http://www.raspberry-pi-geek.com/Archive/2013/01/Converting-the-Raspberry-Pi-to-a-wireless-print-server

You could plug network printer into a phone or tablet with a micro-to-full-female USB adapter and a USB-to-Ethernet adapter. I surfed the Internet over ethernet with my $30 android tablet as a test. It all started when the wife didn’t believe me that she could use a wired mouse with her phone :slight_smile:

Edit: I actually created my print server yesterday with a 5 year old laptop that I put Windows 8.1 on. It could’ve probably just as easily been Ubuntu.

Is there a reason you can’t just hang the RPi off an ethernet port on your WiFi router?

If that’s a problem, you may be able to run linux on your Pogoplug, but to run Chrome, you’d probably have to monkey around with a virtual framebuffer to run Chrome. The pogoplugs should have enough USB power to run a cheap linux compatible USB WiFi dongle.

Perhaps a better bet, it looks like someone has written a stand-alone cloudprint server for linux. Someone else has packaged it for Debian. You can get debian running on some pogoplugs.

It looks like there is another cloudprint server for linux too, which the creator has packaged for a number of different distrubutions, including Arch, which also runs on a number of Pogoplug models.

Another option is the BeagleBone black, which comes in at about $50, has onboard ethernet and video, and I haven’t heard of any issues using it with WiFi USB dongles. Its supported by a number of linux distributions, which should save you time when compared to tracking down up-to-date info on getting linux running on a Pogoplug.

Final option, router running OpenWRT. Perhaps running the first cloudprint server I mentioned above. The thing is, printer proxies can be surprisingly demanding of storage space and RAM. I was going to run an AirPrint server on a router, but decided not to because of the resource requirements.

I wouldn’t dink around with those Android mini-PCs for something like this (a headless), unless you are 100% sure it will work. Android is hackable, but less easily than a standard linux distribution. You can get a full linux version running on them, but its generally not worth the effort. The main advantage over a Beaglebone black would be more performance, RAM, and better graphics, but the video/graphics acceleration generally doesn’t work well under linux, if at all, and for this application, the added RAM and performance aren’t going to yield much benefit.