Send printer control codes using Powershell

Question

I need to send a sequence of control codes (decimal 27, 112, 0, 25 and 250) to a USB printer "Epson TM printer" using Powershell.

I would like to put the control codes in decimal in a plain text file. e.g. keys.txt.

Content of keys.txt

What is the easiest way to send the control codes to the USB printer? I am thinking whether I need to create a "Generic / Text only" printer pointing to the same USB port, and then use Out-Printer "Generic / Text only" to send the control codes to it.

I tried

gc keys.txt | out-printer "Generic / Text only"

but the result was not what I wanted. Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks

You should be `able to open a stream to the printer port` and write your commands. — Angshuman Agarwal, Jun 17 '12 at 16:59

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

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You should be able to open a stream to the printer port and write your commands

Something like this you can achieve in C#. Just call or convert this in powershell as explained here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg981616

System.IO.StreamWriter sr = new System.IO.StreamWriter(@"\\.\LPT1");
sr.Write(0x1b); 
sr.Write('k'); 
sr.Write('1'); 
sr.Write("Hello"); // print in Sans Serif
sr.WriteLine();
sr.Flush();
sr.Close();

edited May 23 '17 at 12:03

Community

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answered Jun 17 '12 at 17:19

Angshuman Agarwal

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But, "writer" starts with a "w" :). – Shibumi Jun 18 '12 at 13:20
This does not work. I have an error: FileStream will not open Win32 devices such as disk partitions and tape drives. Avoid use of "\\.\" in the path. – Trurl123 Nov 08 '12 at 06:05
May be you can google on that specific error and try differently. – Angshuman Agarwal Nov 08 '12 at 12:22

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 17 '12 at 18:37

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$s = [char]0x1B +[char]0x70 + [char]0x00 + [char]0x19 + [char]0xFA
Out-Printer -Name <yourprinter> $s

answered Jun 17 '12 at 18:37

David Brabant

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Thanks David. I found that if I read the codes from a file, I need to mask them with [char][byte]. However, I just found another problem. If I send the control codes to the printer using Out-Printer command, there are some extra characters (0a, 20, 30, 33, etc) sent with my own codes to the printer too. I thought there may be something configurable in the printer driver but I couldn't find any. The Generic / Text only driver was so simple.... I don't know what went wrong. – Barry Chum Jun 17 '12 at 22:57
I just found a passthrough printer driver that solved the issue!! The Windows Generic / Text Only driver is not very good at passing thru.... – Barry Chum Jun 18 '12 at 09:36

Send printer control codes using Powershell

2 Answers2