Print audit and raspberry pi

[barber782]

Hi everyone,

I have been looking into a low cost computer that I could stick on the back of one of our customers printers that was low cost, cheap, and low power that would be dedicated to just print audit.

We are possibly looking at putting a raspberry pi in some customers.
Has anyone attempted this yet, if so I would appreciate some help getting it up and running.

Regards

Nick

[rthonpm]

A Raspberry Pi uses an ARM processor so unless you're able to recompile Print Audit to support it you're better suited looking at an Intel NUC or even a refurbed ultra small form factor PC.

[MCC-support]

I am actually in the process of doing exactly that but instead of PrintAudit, it'll be FMAudit (same difference really).

As mentioned, they use ARM processors and the normal x86 platform app wouldn't normally work... however! MS has released an open source version of .NET framework (which it relies on) that will work on linux based systems. On top of that, you can use apps like WINE to run x86 apps.

I have had a few positive results so far but still a little way to go. If I manage to get it working completely, then I'll post up a guide when I'm done. In the meantime, the new version B of Pi has a bit more guts to it and if you're savvy enough, you might be able to get a barebones/mini version of Windows running in a Vbox well enough to support a tiny app like PrintAudit.

Good luck!

[barber782]

Nice one. That would be great if you manage to get it working. Got a few guys looking into it my end, so if we manage to get it working correctly before you I'l do the same and email an installation guide.
In the meantime please could you keep me posted on your progress.

Kind regards

Nick

[rthonpm]

That's asking a lot of a Raspberry pi: emulation of any x86 instruction sets is going to take up almost all of the computing power, and furthermore you're still going to need to recompile Print Audit since it's built to run x86 instruction sets. Wine alone isn't going to rewrite instruction paths. There's also copyright issues since recompiling proprietary software is often illegal or at least violates the license agreement.

Hopefully, some of these companies will see the potential for the Pi, or something like it, as a solution for embedded devices like Print Audit.