phomemo is a script to quickly print a label from the Linux command line.
I bought a Phomemo M02S label printer to quickly print labels that look better than my ugly hand-written ones. While the printer itself is great, the software isn't:
- it's only for IOS and Android - so no fast typing on the keyboard
- it seems to be spyware - why the hell won't it run if it can't access my location data?
- it has tons of options that I'm not interested in - images, fancy borders, emoji - which just means navigating a lot of menus in addition to typing the label text itself.
So, I made this command line script that lets you just type "phomemo labeltext" and get a label with that text. You can still configure some things like font and label width (1/3, 2/3, full width).
You need perl and perl-GD installed. You probably have perl anyway. On Ubuntu,
use apt install libgd-perl to get GD; on other linuxes, use your native
package installer. The lib name might be different on those.
Copy the phomemo file to anywhere in your path. Copy phomemo.cfg to
$HOME/.config/phomemo.cfg`.
font: Choose a font to use. The default one needs the ttf-mscorefonts-installer
package installed. You can use any TrueType font though, just specify its
file name.
paperwidth: this is the number of pixels the printer can print. The M02S
can print 576 pixels; the M02 seems to want 384.
divisor: The width of your actual label. Typical values are 1 (full width),
2 (half width), and 3 (1/3 width), which are the sizes of the label stickers
that came with my printer.
device: The device name of the printer. On a USB printer, this is typically
/dev/usb/lp1 unless you have more than one USB printer. The raw serial
device (/dev/ttyACM0, again, unless you have more than one) works as well.
However, you need to be in a group that has access to those devices.
Either do sudo adduser <username> lp if you want to use the
/dev/usb/lpX device, or adduser <username> dialout of you want
to use /dev/usb/ttyACMX. Remember to relog after that.
While I recommend using USB, as you need to keep the printer charged anyway, you can use Bluetooth as well. Use hcitool to find out your printer's MAC address, then rfcomm to provide a serial device for it:
# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
04:7F:0E:56:12:17 M02S
# rfcomm connect 1 04:7F:0E:56:12:17
Connected /dev/rfcomm1 to 04:7F:0E:56:12:17 on channel 1
Press CTRL-C for hangup
Now you can use /dev/rfcomm1 to access the printer. You also need to be
in the dialout group to do that.
Easy as pie. Type phomemo "Hello World" to get a Hello World label.
You can override all of the config file parameters if you want like this:
phomemo --font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf --divisor 2 --device /dev/rfcomm3 "Hello World"
where the option names are just the names from the config file.
Maybe, maybe not. The M02S is the only one I own so I can't tell anything about other models or brands. The command set seems to be standardized (Epson POS) so there is a chance to get others to work as well; the main problem is probably figuring out the correct paper width.
Thank you to vivier (https://github.com/vivier/phomemo-tools) for the insight I needed to make this work. The fact that the printer uses ESC/POS is from him, and I wouldn't have any idea how to do Bluetooth without his instructions.
Thanks also to theacodes (https://github.com/theacodes/phomemo_m02s), her code made me realize the M02S has 576 pixels, after I never got any output while using the 384 pixels from vivier's code.