AirWriter is a small dongle that turns an Apple ImageWriter II into an AirPrint printer. Plug it into the printer's serial port, join it to your Wi-Fi, and your iPhone, iPad or Mac prints to the ImageWriter like any modern printer, with no drivers and no computer in the middle.
It also speaks LocalTalk, so a vintage Mac can print to the same printer through Apple's AppleTalk ImageWriter driver. That side is in development.
Status: rev A boards are built and printing. AirPrint works from iPhone and Mac, including the out-of-paper pause. Vintage Macs find the printer over LocalTalk; printing from them, factory reset and signed firmware updates are in progress.
- An ESP32-S3 runs an IPP Everywhere printer: Bonjour advertising, the IPP job protocol, and Apple's URF raster format.
- Each page is decoded, dithered to 1-bit, and turned into ImageWriter II graphics commands, then sent at 9600 baud with the printer's own hardware handshake, so the printer sets the pace.
- A 37-dot light panel shows what it's doing: Wi-Fi, ready, printing, out of paper, offline.
- A PIC12F1840 running TashTalk joins the board to a LocalTalk network as a printer node.
The wiki covers setup, the status lights, the DIP switches, settings, updates and troubleshooting. You need an ImageWriter II and an 8-pin mini-DIN crossover printer cable, wired like the one a Mac used (Apple's 590-0552 is one); straight-wired cables don't work.
| Path | What's there |
|---|---|
firmware/ |
ESP-IDF application (ESP32-S3) |
tools/ |
Host builds of the raster pipeline and IPP code, with tests and fixtures |
hardware/ |
KiCad board and front panel |
enclosure/ |
Case and light-guide lattice in build123d, with printable STLs in out/ |
docs/ |
Spec, design notes and traps |
Firmware builds with ESP-IDF 5.5 (idf.py -C firmware build). Host tests run anywhere with a C
compiler: make -C tools/rip test regress. AGENTS.md has the full toolchain notes.
Firmware and tools are GPL-3.0-or-later, hardware and enclosure CERN-OHL-S-2.0, docs
CC-BY-SA-4.0. See LICENSE.md, which also covers third-party material. The
AirWriter name and logo are not licensed: if you build and sell your own, please call it
something else.