Using a receipt printer with the Amazon Echo

Today, I’m going to share this write-up by fellow developer Chris, who used the escpos-php thermal printing library as part of a setup which printed shopping lists via voice commands, using the Alexa Voice Service API to send the lists back to a Raspberry Pi.

Naturally, the easiest solution […] is to print it in thermal paper… Now, combine this with a voice interface, such as ALEXA, and you made yourself a voice controlled list printer.

I found out about this one through a blog comment, and it’s a recommended read for anybody who is interested in how all of these parts integrate.

When I first uploaded this printing library four years ago, the Amazon Echo did not exist yet, and I was solving a very specific problem. For an old technology, it’s interesting to see that new applications for thermal printers are still appearing, and I’m certainly glad to see my software popping up in cool projects like this.

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