Hello, I was wondering if the following concept would be possible with an arduino, and if so, if and someone has already done it.
My job has old control units have a 25-pin parallel centronics printer output. We use this to print a systems report (only about 100 characters or less) I want to be able to "print" a .txt file to a USB flash drive instead of using an old printer.
In the past we have used this unit to do the job:
http://www.ipcas.com/products/centronics-parallel-to-usb-printer.html
It works great, but we need more, and each unit costs $600
There are many converters on the market that go from USB to parallel, but very few that go from parallel to USB.
Could I do this with an arduino? I would need multiple inputs, then store the data, then have the arduino convert it to serial format, then output it to a usb socket, right? How much programming (that hasn't already been figured out) be required?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!