B4A Class Bluetooth ESC/POS Printer Class

agraham · Jun 8, 2019

For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with an 80mm Bluetooth ESC/POS thermal printer I bought off eBay, new and delivered, for the ludicrously cheap price of £20. While the print quality, particularly of images with large areas of black (they are gray due to power supply or thermal dissipation limitations probably), is not great it is adequate. The printer itself seems to be a generic Chinese unit (no surprise there then!) which is re-badged by all and sundry and sold at a remarkably wide range of prices.

Here then is a Printer class that will connect by Bluetooth to the printer and enable access to most of the printer functions, including barcodes and image preparation and printing. The included demo shows the capabilities that are available. To run the demo you will need a paired Bluetooth printer that is switched on. The Printer class uses the BitmapCreator, RandomAccessFile and Serial libraries.

On my printer the only thing that doesn't seem to work properly is QR code generation. Small QR codes don't seem to be able to be decoded by scanners and larger ones look obviously wrong with part of the top of the code replicated at the bottom when printed.

The obvious capabilities missing (so far!) are user defined characters and non-volatile bit images. Also not implemented are some codes that are either duplicates of available commands or ones whose functions I don’t understand.

The class module is included as source code in the demo so you can add any missing capabilities you need. If you add a significant one then please post it for others to play with.

EDIT: Version 2 now posted includes support for creating custom characters. See post #5 for details

Ertan · Jul 7, 2020

emexes said:
That looks good. The sample in the photograph, presumably you printed that with:

B4X:

Printer1.WriteString("İrem") Printer1.WriteString("Oğlan") Printer1.WriteString("OĞLAN") Printer1.WriteString("Şile") Printer1.WriteString("şile")

Does WriteString automatically add CRLF to move to the next line, or do you have to add it "manually" eg:

B4X:

Printer1.WriteString("İrem" & CRLF) 'CRLF is actually only LF Printer1.WriteString("İrem" & Chr(13) & Chr(10)) 'CR = ASCII 13, LF = ASCII 10

View attachment 96717

B4X:

    Printer1.WriteString("İrem" & CRLF)    'CRLF is actually only LF
    Printer1.WriteString("İrem" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))    'CR = ASCII 13, LF = ASCII 10

rem writes as. The letter "İ"does not appear.

Ertan · Jul 7, 2020

emexes said:
Can you show me your code that initializes/opens Printer1?

Ertan · Jul 7, 2020

emexes said:

What do you get if you do:

B4X:

Printer1.WriteString("Hello One")
Printer1.WriteString("Hello Two" & Chr(10))
Printer1.WriteString("Hello Three" & Chr(13))
Printer1.WriteString("Hello Four" & Chr(13) & Chr(10))
Printer1.WriteString("Hello Five")

I get results this way.

I noticed something.

When selecting PC857 from the printer's settings and printing all the letters, Turkish letters are printed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, there are no Turkish letters when the Charset is printed on the B4A Bluetooth Printer project.
There is no letter here.

emexes · Jul 7, 2020

Ertan said:
I get results this way.

Righto, so that tells us:
- CR/LF is not automatically added
- LF will move to start of next line
- CR does nothing

which aligns with what the class code seems to do.

I noticed something.

Yikes, you have good eyes!

Ertan · Jul 7, 2020

emexes said:
Righto, so that tells us:
- CR/LF is not automatically added
- LF will move to start of next line
- CR does nothing

which aligns with that the class code seems to do.

Yikes, you have good eyes!

SOLVED!

B4X:

Printer1.WriteString2("Türkçe Yazı" & CRLF, "IBM857")

You can print Turkish characters with this code.
IBM857 It is important.

Tico.13 · Oct 21, 2020

Hi @agraham, how can i establish the barcode width, i have try taking out the comment of 'Printer1.BarCodeWidth = 4 and setting a number but i havent get it to work, thanks in advance an best regards

agraham · Oct 21, 2020

If anything doesn't work it is most likely a problem with the printer, especially if it is a cheap Chinese one. These seem to vary in the extent and quality of their implementation of ESC/POS codes.

Tico.13 · Oct 23, 2020

Thanks Agraham! is there a way to hide or not show the info that its printed after the barcode?

agraham · Oct 24, 2020

HriPosn?

satriadikawirian · Dec 18, 2020

please help me how to print centered text in escposprinter?

agraham · Dec 19, 2020

It's already implemented in the ESCPOSPrinter class

B4X:

' Set the line content justification, must be the first item on a new line
' 0 left, 1 centre, 2 right
Public Sub setJustify(justify As Int)
    WriteString(ESC & "a" & Chr(justify + 48))
End S

TILogistic · Dec 19, 2020

WriteString(ESC & "a" & Chr(justify + 48))

48 or 49

TILogistic · Dec 19, 2020

ESC a

[Name]
Select justification
[Format]

ASCII	ESC	a	n
Hex	1B	61	n
Decimal	27	97	n

[Range]
n = 0 – 2, 48 – 50
[Default]
n = 0
[Description]
In Standard mode, aligns all the data in one line to the selected layout, using n as follows:

n	Justification
0, 48	Left justification
1, 49	Centered
2, 50	Right justification

satriadikawirian · Dec 28, 2020

[QUOTE = "agraham, pos: 785087, anggota: 448"]
Ini sudah diterapkan di kelas ESCPOSPrinter
[CODE = b4x] 'Setel justifikasi konten baris, harus menjadi item pertama di baris baru
'0 kiri, 1 tengah, 2 kanan
Public Sub setJustify (justify As Int)
WriteString (ESC & "a" & Chr (rata + 48))
Akhiri S [/ CODE]
[/QUOTE]
terima kasih @agraham. ini sangat membantu saya

Tico.13 · Dec 28, 2020

Hi @agraham ! hope you are fine! How does the printbuffer works? im trying to print in labels paper but after sending to print 3 labels(paper) my printer starts to jumps spaces and print outside the paper or there is a way to set paper size or the gap between labels?

Joel R · Jan 5, 2021

agraham said:
For the last couple of weeks I have been playing with an 80mm Bluetooth ESC/POS thermal printer I bought off eBay, new and delivered, for the ludicrously cheap price of £20. While the print quality, particularly of images with large areas of black (they are gray due to power supply or thermal dissipation limitations probably), is not great it is adequate. The printer itself seems to be a generic Chinese unit (no surprise there then!) which is re-badged by all and sundry and sold at a remarkably wide range of prices.

Here then is a Printer class that will connect by Bluetooth to the printer and enable access to most of the printer functions, including barcodes and image preparation and printing. The included demo shows the capabilities that are available. To run the demo you will need a paired Bluetooth printer that is switched on. The Printer class uses the BitmapCreator, RandomAccessFile and Serial libraries.

On my printer the only thing that doesn't seem to work properly is QR code generation. Small QR codes don't seem to be able to be decoded by scanners and larger ones look obviously wrong with part of the top of the code replicated at the bottom when printed.

The obvious capabilities missing (so far!) are user defined characters and non-volatile bit images. Also not implemented are some codes that are either duplicates of available commands or ones whose functions I don’t understand.

The class module is included as source code in the demo so you can add any missing capabilities you need. If you add a significant one then please post it for others to play with.

EDIT: Version 2 now posted includes support for creating custom characters. See post #5 for details

I had only 1 problem about this printer module regarding on barcode 39 extra character on last digit..
anyone can solve about my problem?

agraham · Jan 5, 2021

Tico.13 said:
my printer starts to jumps spaces and print outside the pape

Joel R said:
on barcode 39 extra character on last digit..

All these cheap Chinese thermal printers seem buggy in one way or another so you will just have to play with it yourself and see if you can find something that works for you.

satriadikawirian · Jan 22, 2021

sorry agraham, does ESCPOSPrinter have the facility to print Layout? thank you

agraham · Jan 22, 2021

satriadikawirian said:
have the facility to print Layout?

I don't know what this means. Please give more detail.

Urishev · Jan 22, 2021

Thank you Mr. Agraham for the wonderful Bluetooth Printer Class.
There are no lines in your example. Does your class support line drawing?

B4A Class Bluetooth ESC/POS Printer Class

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