Season 01 / Modern Printer Management
Welcome to the Jam
I’m walking through how we got to Modern Printer Management, what MQTT changes, how enrollment actually works, and what all of it means when you have a real fleet to manage.
Episodes
Welcome to the Jam: My Hot Take on Printer Management
Fifteen years ago, Android fragmentation made device management feel like a collection of exceptions. Printer management gives me the same feeling, except now there are label rolls involved.
Why I Keep Calling Connectors the Boogeyman
Connectors bring another service, another owner, and another place to look when something breaks. I still call them the boogeyman. I also still need them.
Talk MQTT to Me
MQTT is plumbing. Good. I would rather reuse good plumbing than turn every new printer manufacturer into another custom integration project.
Printers Are Still a Thing. Which Printers?
The printers on my desk are not office copiers. They are the stubborn frontline machines behind coffee labels, hospital wristbands, receipts, and checkout lines. Those are the devices I want us to manage.
Wired Printer Enrollment, Cables and All
A Zebra printer, three cables, a provisioning file, and the thing my daughter wanted me to print. Wired enrollment is not glamorous, but it is honest hardware.
I Installed the Wrong App: Wireless Printer Enrollment
I installed Zebra Print. Wrong app. Once I recovered, a Samsung phone and Bluetooth replaced the Windows laptop in the enrollment handoff.
What I Wanted the Printer Roadmap to Fix
Putting printers in the real device list was the easy part. I wanted the roadmap to kill the firmware scavenger hunt and make printer data useful enough to act on.
The Printer Was Never the Finish Line
The first Jam season started with a printer, a pun, and an accidental shot of my feet. It ends by asking which frontline device problem has earned the right to come next.
