Print out dashboard on network printer

Hi. I have a table on a dashboard which i need to print on a network printer when i get a digital input.
Have looked for nodes but i have not found any suitable node..
node red is running on a windows server so i could perhaps add some driver there. I want to be able to print to several printers at the same time.

Print! How quaint :wink:

As it is a windows server, you will need the drivers anyway. But to print from Dashboard, you either need a way to drive the dashboard display from the server (e.g. either using remote desktop or something like Puppet for automation) or you will need the Dashboard user to have access to the connected printer because the Dashboard runs in the browser and not on the server.

It is certainly theoretically possible to send data direct to a server connected printer though these days, that is a really rare requirement and I'm not aware of any nodes. But in any case, the output wouldn't be from the Dashboard because that is browser only, it would need to be something that takes the data directly and formats it for direct output. In many cases, even Windows printers allow the simple lpt output similar to simple output on a Linux/Unix server so you could also potentially dump data via a command prompt shell script. Depending on what formatting you needed.

What i want to print is information i have in a list i created with tabulator..
I can access the information before sending it to tabulator so getting access to the data is not a problem..
Problem is to get that data to the printer.. but as i said i have not found any good nodes to use so i am a bit lost here.

As mentioned, you need an application that is able to format output for print. You also need the appropriate drivers. Typically printing is done by the user not the server but if you need to automate the print, you generally need an app that understands how to format your source data.

A couple of possible ways would be to:

  • Use a PowerShell command or script via node-red's exec node
  • Add the LPD Print Service feature which I think would let you direct output from the command line.

Otherwise, there may be node.js packages that might let you print direct from node.js (which is what underpins node-red).

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