Captive Portal Voucher Printer Solution
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Hello Guys,
I was wondering if you guys know a printer (like a ticket quequeing machine) for the generated voucher file (.csv).
I need it for the cafe shops and restaurants.
Let me know the brand or model.
kind regards,
WM -
There are a ton of printers and such that can do the job but you might need to narrow the parameters a bit there.
Are you looking for something to print sticky labels, paper tickets, or something else?
If you want to print paper tickets you'll probably find that point-of-sale thermal receipt printers are the way to go, they often have cutters that will slice between "pages". The paper is cheap, and no ink or toner is involved.
The last one of those I used was a star micronics 600-series (USB, with a cutter). It was for a point-of-sale system but the printer was supported by windows and the driver had adjustments for cutting between pages. It was funny watching a windows test page roll out of the thing.
They can be a little pricey but they save you a ton of money on ink in the long run.
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Hi there, thanks for your response.
To be honest I am not really familiar with POS devices :(
Questions:
1. So the front desk staffs will print the ticket from the Windows machine where the thermal printer is connected via USB?
2. Can this USB thermal printer attached directly to the pfsense box (ALIX 2D board)?
3. Is there a thermal printer that ONLY allows the front desk staffs to push the button in the printer to generate the voucher? This thermal printer is attached to either Windows box or pfsense.
best regards,
WM -
The place I used one, it was attached directly to a windows PC.
It could not attach to pfSense.
What you'd normally do is export a roll of vouchers from pfSense to a CSV file and them import it into windows somehow (e.g. LO Calc, Excel, etc) and then print them to the printer from there in a batch, and then have them hand out the slips as needed.
If you want "on demand" printing where the vouchers are not printed until they're requested, that's a lot harder. It would involve a program on the front desk PC that could trigger the printing of just one voucher at a time from the roll. Possible, but not as simple as pre-printing them. Someone else here may have better advice for that.
