--- /dev/null
+---
+id: 1032
+title: Saving power of powerful printers
+date: 2018-07-01T17:14:46+00:00
+author: xro
+layout: post
+guid: http://wp.realraum.at/?p=1032
+permalink: /2018/07/saving-power-of-powerful-printers/
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+categories:
+ - english
+ - Projekte
+ - realraum News
+---
+At home, my Samsung laser-printer uses 15W during standby. So, a few years back, in order to save power, I put it on a USB-controlled power-plug. Pretty soon I added a tiny script that would query cups if a print-job was queued and would switch the printer on and afterwards off again. It turned out to be a pretty effective power saving measure.
+
+<p style="height:150px;">
+ <img src="http://wp.realraum.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/usbpowerswitching-300x148.jpg" alt="usbpowerswitching" width="300" height="148" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1035" />
+</p>
+
+Our two very big and reliable printers at realraum were even more power hungry, so I wanted to to something similar for the space.
+
+Using the hardware I had on hand, I cobbled together the following:
+
+* A BeagleBone Green to act as cups print-server and to run the python scripts.
+
+* An empty 230V power-plug case, housing a 5V power-supply (for the BB) and a small opto-coupler isolated relay to switch the plug.
+
+* A second power-plug case with a second small opto-coupler isolated relay.
+
+While there is a lot of room for optimization, like a leaner BeagleBone image and better housing for the power-plugs, printing- and power-saving-wise it works very well.
+
+As always you can find our <a href="https://github.com/realraum/printerbone" title="Code on Github" target="_blank">code on Github.</a> Stay tuned for updates.
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