Finished draft of the article on the little prynter

content/Articles/littleprynter/index.md

@@ -1,17 +1,19 @@
 ---
-categories : ["English"]
+categories : ["English","Hacking","Printing","Art"]
 title : "Little Prynter"
 displayInMenu : false
 dropCap : false
 description : "I've reinvented the fax : why, how, and why you could do it yourself too."
-date : "2022-07-24"
-draft : true
+date : "2022-10-27"
+draft : false
 displayInList : true
 resources:
 - name: featuredImage
-  src: "cover.jpg"
+  src: "cover.png"
 ---
 
+### The backstory
+
 A few years ago, a friend of mine showed me the [Little Printer](https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3927228/little-printer-review), created by Berg Inc. I loved the ideal of having what was more a less a fax machine, that I could use to print out anything for very very cheap. It's based on a thermal printer, so it doesn't use any ink, and the paper is the same you would use to print out receipts. The issue was that it cost nearly 300€ (!), and that was way too much money for something that was a gimmic. 
 
 Moreover, it was pretty limited : it was tied to a proprieatry cloud system, and what I feard back then became true. Berg stopped supporting the Little Printer, and the whole ecosystem was now ready to become trash. 
@@ -22,7 +24,9 @@ A more personnal quarrel I have with designers is perfectly represented in the L
 
 I still liked the idea. 
 
-Another friend, whom I was visiting, had a thermal printer in his box of things-that-gather-dust and was happy to lend it to me so I could try it out. I started  to build my own Little Printer. 
+### Hacking in it, to try it out.
+
+Another friend, whom I was visiting, had a thermal printer in his box of _things-that-gather-dust_ and was happy to lend it to me so I could try it out. I started  to build my own Little Printer. 
 
 I wanted to build something KISS ( Keep It Super Simple ), easy to replicate, and that I could eventually build on over the years. Using existing components and combining them together in a way that was easy to reverse was also a priority. I had a Raspberry Pi, a computer running Linux, a USB webcam, and a Adafruit Thermal Printer. 
 
@@ -36,7 +40,9 @@ Thankfully, Adafruit has tutorial on how to build a polaroïd camera with a ther
 
 Even with theses issues, I knew that thermal printing was a cool tech, and I could use it for a lot of my other printing and propaganda projects. So I started looking for another thermal printer. 
 
-I eventually setteld on an EPSON TM20-III, which is around 250€. Nearly the same prince as a LittlePrinter, but it has Ethernet, a standard-ish protocol, USB, two sizes of paper, a cutting blade, 300 dpi resolution, and prints so fast that when you fuck up the orientation of the print, before you can stop it, it already printed 3 meters of paper. In a word, it's perfect. I then bought 4 _kilometers_ of paper for around 50€. 
+### Making it searious
+
+I eventually settled on an EPSON TM20-III, which is around 250€. Nearly the same prince as a LittlePrinter, but it has Ethernet, a standard-ish protocol, USB, two sizes of paper, a cutting blade, 300 dpi resolution, and prints so fast that when you fuck up the orientation of the print, before you can stop it, it already printed 3 meters of paper. In a word, it's perfect. I then bought 4 _kilometers_ of paper for around 50€. Also keep in mind that these printers are used around the world in industrial settings, and if you know how I'm sure you could find one for very cheap or second-hand.
 
 I wanted to write the software in Python, because I found a very nice library for ESC/POS, the standard used by the EPSON printers. I also had built software with Flask, a python web framework, and I loved the design style and the ease it gave to build APIs.
 
@@ -46,5 +52,16 @@ There was Little Prynter.
 
 A few pictures to show it off ; 
 
+![A picture of rubber duck on a thermal printer](result.jpg)
 
-I also paid attention to the git repository I was writing this code to, and I provide instructions on how to set it up if you want to. You can find it all here : [Little Prynter @ git.n07070.xyz](https://git.n07070.xyz/n07070/littleprynter).
+> A picture of rubber duck on a thermal printer
+
+![A picture of the web interface](photomaton.png)
+
+> A picture of the web interface
+
+I also paid attention to the git repository I was writing this code to, and I provide instructions on how to set it up if you want to. You can find it all here : [Little Prynter @ git.n07070.xyz](https://git.n07070.xyz/n07070/littleprynter). 
+
+### In the futur
+
+I would very much like to make it portable, and maybe add some flash device to it, so it can be used in dark settings. Maybe keeping the image in cache, dithering it and offering a downloaded version would be nice too. Maybe offering a reprint so every one can have one, printing them by bunch of 4 like a real photomaton might do the trick.