storing graphic on/for thermal printer

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

The more I find out the less I know :frowning:

I have got my Posiflex 6800 Serial thermal printer running now, using the scraps of information that I can understand from the manufacturer, Ladyada, Sparkfun, and some ESC/POS info from Epsom, and a few postings on our forum. ( thanks )
I have learnt a hell of a lot, but realise theres a long way to go, and I dont have any spare time at all to learn.

So, now I can print the important text - bigger/smaller/inverted/ justified etc. - but now I need some help to get a logo ( 15k .cpp file ) that I generated as per the instructions on the ladyada mini thermal tutorial , into the eeprom of the printer - unless I make it much smaller and try to save it in the 328 eeprom?

When I tried to run the ladyada sample, ( I had made a seperate tab , and saved the file there as suggested , but when I try to run my sketch, it says progmem has not been defined , so I tried including #include <avr/pgmspace.h> but still no luck.

I have a feeling I am trying all sorts of bits from different libraries, that are not working.

Can anyone give me a clue ? I can't seem to find how much memory the printer has now for NVM users memory, I can delete the barcode bitmaps there - I dont need them now.

2

I tried running the Adafruit thermal printer test, with their own logo, it works until it gets to the logos then it churns out about 100mm ( 4 " ) of garbage symbols and blanks..

I have loaded my logo into the printers nvmemory using the PC, but I cant find any details of how to print from the nvm.

The printer is supposed to be comapatable with the T88 commands, but the best manual for that I could find is written for windows codes or something, nothing like the Arduino I know a bit of.

3

and why doesnt the 15k image fit on the 32k program space of the AVR?

4

That was what I was trying at first, but the only example I could find was the adafruit sketch, where they suggest storing the bimap on a seperate tab, as logoname.cpp, and changing its type to :-
static unsigned char_attribute_((progmem))logoname
but it will not compile as progmem has not been declared.

I copied the cpp into the libraries in case ( I tried the Thermal, Adafruit-thermal, and the Adafruitthermal libraries )

I have tried several things, and eventually thought it might be easier to have the logo in the printers memory to call up when needed, but its also not easy....

5

Try putting the bitmap into your primary tab instead. If that fails, post your code.

6

Thanks Wildbill,

I have a bitmap lookup array for the 7 segment LED displays, that I declare in the opening of the sketch, that looks like this :-

const byte digitTable [10] = {
B01110111, B00010100, B01101101, B00111101, B00011110, B00111011, B01111011, B00010101, B01111111,B00111111 } ;

Do you think the logo should be similar? I have used the LCDassistant software to generate the cpp as recommended on the adafruit thermal printer tutorial. and it is basically just a comma seperated load of bytes, " radiant" is the name of the logo :-

const unsigned char radiant [] = {
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x06, 0x7C, 0xF0, 0xC0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x08, 0x10, 0x60, 0xC0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x03, 0x0F, 0x7E, 0xF8, 0xF0, 0xE0, 0xC0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0F, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFC, 0xF8,
0xE0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
etc.

And then I have to find the way to call up the array to feed to the printer..... This is all abit new ( and interesting to me )

7

Given that that logo is 15K in size, it'll need to go in progmem:

#include <avr/pgmspace.h>

const prog_uchar radiant [] = {
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x40, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x06, 0x7C, 0xF0, 0xC0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x08, 0x10, 0x60, 0xC0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x03, 0x0F, 0x7E, 0xF8, 0xF0, 0xE0, 0xC0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x0F, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFC, 0xF8,
0xE0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00};
8

OK I will give it a go

9

OK I have put that at the top, but with the ESC/POS method of calling it up is very confusing, I tried using the adafruit thermal library which is meant to make it easier, but it doesnt work with its own example, I just get gibberish when it comes to the barcodes or grahics ( the various text examples are fine )

10

Just in case someone else has this problem with a thermal printer with eeprom storage for logos , I found the ESC POS commands for printing the stored logo image ( the manufacturers couldn't help ! ) in decimal it is :-

thermal.print( 28, BYTE);
thermal.print( 112, BYTE);
thermal.print( 1, BYTE); // number 1 image in eeprom
thermal.print( 3, BYTE); // double width double height