Exploring Receipt Printers with JavaScript and ESC POS Protocol

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This chapter explores the control of receipt printers using JavaScript and the ESC POS communication protocol. The speaker shares personal experiences and technical insights into connecting and customizing printed receipts through TCP sockets.

Wes unveils his Hack-Week project —a thermal printer controlled by JavaScript that prints out Sentry.io errors in real-time. Scott and Wes dive into the nitty-gritty of how it works, from the ESC/POS protocol to tackling socket issues, and whether the project was worth the effort.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:38 Brought to you by Sentry.io.
01:10 What is Hack Week?
01:41 The project.
- Follow the posts on X.
02:40 Why a receipt printer?
03:55 How do these printers work?
- ESC/POS.
05:20 Communicating with the printer.
07:24 ESC/POS Encoder.
ESC/POS Encoder.
08:42 Socket issues.
09:56 Using Transformers.js to stop ‘toxic comments’.
- Xenova’s toxic-bert.
- Implementation in Wes’ code.
10:48 Back to socket issues.
12:18 Integrating with Sentry.
15:01 Printing images with Playwright.
16:17 Was it worth it?