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Comment by leros | Hacker News Reader

These already exist. I see wired ones on Amazon for $50 and wireless ones for $60.

Is your device different from what's already on the market?

These are just a port-forwarding devices like the ones from the 90s, which just wrap printer port over TCP. No auto-discovery, need for drivers, no scanning support.

Contrary to older-generation print server hardware or home routers with printer-sharing functions, my device does not require to install any printer-specific drivers or applications on your devices but uses universal standard drivers available in any contemporary operating system.

The printer driver is running on the print server itself, freeing you from installing drivers on the PC.

In other words, with it you can use AirPrint and Mopria to print and scan over the network on your USB printer.

Interesting. I personally don't mind installing drivers as the OS makes it just a few clicks but I'm sure there is an advantage of not having to.

Well, you can't do that on iOS in general for example. There may be no drivers for Windows on ARM, or for macOS ARM. Or for Android.

If you just need to convert USB printer to a Wi-Fi printer, the regular old print server will work for you, and you'll need to install the driver on the PC. You won't be able to print to such a printer from the smartphones, without third-party software or at all.

With my device, you can. It will act like a regular modern AirPrint-supported printer.

Gotcha. I don't use iOS so I haven't had that experience. On OSX, Ubuntu, and Android it's been just a few taps to connect to a network printer and install drivers.

I think that might be a clue for you. This might be a problem most felt by iOS users. Could determine how you market such a a device.

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