Genuinely Original Content

2020-01-01T12:00:00.000+00:00

Something Old, Something New

Welcome to something you don't find on the Internet too much anymore - genuinely original content.

I'm a firm believer in making computers work for you - whenever I have a problem that I think computers should be able to help with, I'll usually fire up a web browser and start searching - 99 times out of a 100 someone has blazed the trail before you and written it up.

This blog is all about those other times - times when I've come up with a solution myself (yes, I'm tech savvy, can program in a variety of languages and am a bit of a geek, but I've also spent years helping my non-tech friends and family enjoy what computers are good for - legwork).

The aim of these pages is to document in a clear and simple way, steps that regular folks can follow to enjoy the benefits of various projects and solutions I've come up with over the years ... stuff that I think will be genuinely helpful but that just isn't out there on any other website.

Use the tabbed menu at the top for navigation or hit the topics direct:

Truly Mobile Printing on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

It goes without saying that I hope you find something useful that you can use in these pages - and if it turns out my efforts have saved you time or money, any sort of donation would be greatly appreciated to help keep things ticking over ...

Let the fun begin ... :-)

Keith

Invert! Invert! Invert!

2012-04-19T18:47:00.000+01:00

So far on the subject of mobile printing for the iPad, I've written about:

Printing from the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch on the road (no router and no sockets required)

Getting the iPad to talk to the H470

Mobile Wireless Printers for the iPad / iPhone

That last post shows just how very limited the choices are when it comes to wanting to print in a truly mobile way ... but what if we widen the net a little and looked at how the iPad could print provided we could get power to a printer?

The problem with battery-operated printers is that pretty much all of them (apart from the H470 and H460 I've previously written about) only offer bluetooth as a wireless option, which is simply a no-go for printing with iPads and iPhones. If we look at regular printers, we open up a ton of options as long as we can solve the power problem.

Enter the power inverter ...

When I was originally looking at this, I saw a lot of sales people wanting to print invoices for customers or truck drivers wanting to print delivery advices or pickup slips from their rig ... so, right there we have a source of power on the road - the humble 12v DC cigarette lighter.

Your car throws out 12v of Direct Current but everyday electrical items want 120v of Alternating Current (or 220v-240v if you're in Europe/Asia) - a power inverter converts the DC so that you can simply plug in your printer (or anything else for that matter) as if you were at home.

This opens up the possibility for AirPrint printers which operate in AdHoc mode ... in these cases there's no need for a third-party printing app - you should be able to just print straight from your iPad / iPhone from any app that supports AirPrint.
Note: Make sure the AirPrint printer you buy can definitely operate in AdHoc mode.

Going the non-AirPrint route though opens up a bunch of more compact printers (or you may already have a printer capable of operating in AdHoc mode). It might be a lot easier to track down something like this with an inverter than the ideal mobile printing solution of a H470 / H460 ...
Note: Make sure the printer you buy can definitely operate in AdHoc mode.

And don't forget the power inverter itself for your car.

Once you've got these, you can set up an AdHoc connection between your printer and your iPad (or just print the standard AirPrint way if compatible) and away you go ...

Tips

Use it only when your engine is running - it's a common misconception that a car's alternator refills the battery all the way. I've heard that modern cars are designed to replace what's taken at any given moment ... so, if you're taking power without the engine running, you're slowly draining your battery and what you use won't get replaced
Check the power rating of the printer you buy - most modern printers (even all-in-ones) run under 100W - but check the specs so that the inverter you buy can handle the printer's power requirements (a laser printer sucks power to heat up the rollers btw, so steer clear)
Make sure the printer can operate in AdHoc wireless mode - otherwise you won't be able to get the iPad / iPhone to talk to it without a router (which you could also run off an inverter, but what's the point when the iPad and printer can talk to each other direct?)

If it turns out my blogging efforts have saved you time or money, any sort of donation would be greatly appreciated to help keep things ticking over. Thanks!

Mobile Wireless Printers for the iPad / iPhone

2012-04-04T11:56:00.001+01:00

After posting about how to set up the iPad to do proper mobile printing (no wires, no routers, just an iPad and a battery-operated HP H470 printer), I got some requests to recommend some other printers given that the H470 is no longer sold (although you should be able to pick one up on eBay as I did).

So I've taken a look around and here's a list of printers that fit the mobile category and that operate in AdHoc mode - you can use the instructions I posted on how to set up the iPad to talk to the H470 as a base for your new printer ... the steps will be different for the printer, but the iPad steps are still relevant and the general principles are all the same.

So, onto battery-operated mobile printers that can operate in an AdHoc wireless network and with which you can print on the road:

HP Deskjet 460CB Mobile Printer with Battery Included - for this, you'll also need the WiFi Dongle (CB001AA2L - HP 802.11g Printer Card)

And ... that's pretty much it I'm afraid, which I'm frankly amazed at. The two HP Deskjets (the 460 I've listed above and the H470 I own and have written about in previous posts) look to be the only truly mobile printers that appear viable for mobile printing on an iPad.

If you find something else that fits the bill (battery-operated with WiFi connectivity in AdHoc mode) then please let me know - and if I see any more, I'll be sure to update this post.

In the meantime - either check the links above for the 460 and dongle, find yourself a H470 (and WiFi dongle) or search Amazon for battery wifi printers and see what's available.

Good luck!

Keith

If it turns out my blogging efforts have saved you time or money, any sort of donation would be greatly appreciated to help keep things ticking over. Thanks!

Getting the iPad to talk to the H470

2012-01-24T10:02:00.000+00:00

If you enjoyed my previous post on completely wireless printing with the iPad (or iPhone/iPod Touch), you may be wondering how to get your H470 set up to talk to the iPad ... here's specific steps for the H470:

Note: Even if you have a different printer, you should be able to apply the following principles to it to get it to work... the important things are making it an AdHoc network and getting the printer and iPad onto the same subnet.

First, you'll need to find out (or set) the H470's IP address and subnet.

Note: These instructions are from Windows ... to do this on a Mac, you'll need to use the Network Printer Setup Utility. In either case, the H470 Manual should help.

To do this, switch on the printer and open the HP Solution Center. Click Settings on the bottom and then choose Printer Toolbox.

Now you'll have a pop-up window with several tabs - you want the "Configure WiFi Profiles" tab ... there'll be three profiles and the active one will have a blue circle, find it and click Configure.

You want it to be an "AdHoc" network, choose any channel (or Auto) and then ensure Manual is checked for the IP settings. Don't set a WEP password yet - make sure it works without any security first then go back afterwards and add WEP encryption if you really need to. Now we get to the payload ... IP Settings.

Here you can set yourself an IP address and subnet ... you could use the settings I chose:

IP Address: 192.168.1.2

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1 (this is the address you'll set on your iPad)
DNS: 8.8.8.8 (for both)

Save the settings and then pop off to your iPad. Open Settings->Wi-Fi and look for the printer network you just set up ... click the white arrow in the blue circle to the right of it to set the network settings.

Choose Static from the three options underneath "IP Address" and put in the two important pieces of info:

IP Address: 192.168.1.1

Subnet: 255.255.255.0

Click the arrow right at the top to go back to "Wi-Fi Networks" and connect to the printer network you just set up (note: try it all without any security first - then go back afterwards and add WEP encryption if you need to). Once you have a tick to indicate you've successfully connected, you should be good to go - open up HP home&biz and you should see your H470 sitting there ready to print.

Enjoy printing without a wire in sight :-)

If it turns out my blogging efforts have saved you time or money, any sort of donation would be greatly appreciated to help keep things ticking over. Thanks!

Printing from the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch on the road (no router and no sockets required)

2011-09-21T20:13:00.000+01:00

OK, so if you - like me - couldn't find anything definitive on the web about how to print from iOS wirelessly without a router to a genuinely mobile printer (i.e. battery-operated and small), then read my story and relax - it is possible after all :-)

Recently I wanted to do something I thought was relatively straightforward and the kind of thing I really should be able to do with an iPad. How wrong I was ...

I've run a full 17-piece big band for the past ten years and right from the outset we've backed up all our music by scanning into PDFs. A few months back I became the proud owner of an iPad and took advantage of having those PDFs lying around by playing in rehearsals and gigs from an app called UnrealBook - brilliant, but until all the band follow suit (currently, five of us are doing it) I've still got to deal with paper.

Well now, I thought, I have all this music available electronically and Apple introduced AirPrint with iOS 4.2 - let's see if there is an AirPrint compatible mobile printer ... one that I could bring along to gigs/rehearsals and when a part goes missing (as they often do - we're talking 6000-7000 pages of music here) just whip out the iPad and a battery-powered printer and wait for the admiring gasps from the band.

Ha!

Don't make me laugh - 9 months after AirPrint was introduced, the range of AirPrint compatible printers was laughably small - 25 being your lot, and not one among them could even remotely be considered anywhere near mobile.

Apple strike again with their penchant for excelling in many areas with their products but having huge blindspots in others - they'll happily tell you that the facility is there, it's not their fault the printer manufacturers haven't caught up yet ... but that's absolutely no help to you or I. And so I set about looking for another, non-AirPrint, solution ...

My Requirements

Small and portable printer (preferably battery-operated)
No extra kit required (i.e. no router involved)
Print A4 PDFs in black & white
Quality/speed aren't necessarily issues *
Permanently store several thousand PDFs on the iPad

Solution

HP H470 + optional WiFi dongle (Q6274A) + case (Q6281A)
iPad (I ended up buying a refurbished first generation)
UnrealBook
HP ePrint Home & Biz
Some basic networking knowledge and a little faith

How-to
The key point to note is that with the above printer I was able to setup an AdHoc network and on the iPad I needed to manually specify an IP address in the same subnet as the wifi network of the printer. That removed the need for a router sat in-between the iPad and the printer.

In fact, you just need to satisfy a couple of generic requirements with whichever printer you decide will meet your mobile-printing requirements:

Printer needs to be able to operate in AdHoc mode
Connect to that AdHoc network with your iOS device and assign an IP address manually in the appropriate subnet

So, connectivity sorted - onto the actual music ... all our PDFs are on my Dropbox account. Inside UnrealBook, I sync'd all the folders and so have every chart on the iPad with a naming convention of "Chart Instrument.pdf" e.g. "Ain't That A Kick In The Head Trumpet 1.pdf".

To print someone's part, I get on the H470's network, open up the music in UnrealBook and use the "Open In" facility to send it to the free HP ePrint app ... from there the H470 magically appears, I press "print" and then it's me that's gasping admiringly as it very quickly spews out an excellent quality copy of the music.

Another generic point - whilst I happily use the free app provided by the printer manufacturer, I could just as easily use one of the mobile printing apps by EuroSmartz (e.g. PrintCentral - EuroSmartz Ltd) - the key thing here is that something on your iPad needs to know how to talk to a printer - EuroSmartz claim their app can talk to virtually any printer - YMMV. For convenience, here's a few that should get the job done:

Note: Apps change regularly, so do check the description to make sure it's going to do the job...

In my quest to see if this whole thing was possible, I read so many blogs/forums from people from various walks of life (truck drivers wanting to print from their rig or salesmen wanting to print an invoice in front of a customer for e.g.) but nowhere could I find anything definitive that told me it was even possible - so I wanted to blog about how, after much research, I took a leap of faith and bought a 2nd hand H470 from eBay, a new WiFi dongle for it, crossed my fingers and hoped.

A leap of faith which sent me soaring way past Apple's own wireless iOS printing options ...

* As it turns out the H470 has excellent reviews all-round and so excels as a mobile printer but performs very well as a regular printer (colour printing, photographs etc.) - I have it attached by USB cable and fed power at home when it's not out at band (and it's still sat in it's case, so all I do is unplug it and carry it out the door).

If it turns out my blogging efforts have saved you time or money, any sort of donation would be greatly appreciated to help keep things ticking over. Thanks!