This guide will show you how to turn an Orange Pi Zero into a Google Cloud Print server.

Orange Pi Zero Setup

Download Debian Jesse from Armbian.

Download Etcher, use it to write the Armbian image to the SDCard. A 4gb card turned out to be the perfect size.

Power the Orange Pi via micro USB and connect the serial port via a CP2012, or your favorite USB/Serial adapter.

On a Mac (or linux) you can use this screen command to connect to the serial terminal. Use your favorite Windows terminal emulator to connect with the same properties on Windows:

screen /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART 115200 8N1 flow off

The default login is root and the password is 1234, you'll be required to change this on login

Once you've logged in and setup a new root password, run nmtui to setup the wireless network, which will be working out of the box:

nmtui

Enter a connection name, SSID and password. Save, quit and your board should be connected to WiFi.

Update the package list and upgrade to the latest packages with:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade -y

SDCard Resize

If you need to re-size your SDCard, maybe you copied an image from another size disk, after the initial boot, run:

update-rc.d firstrun defaults
shutdown -r now

And after the restart, you'll have a bigger disk. Don't worry, this won't delete anything.

Printer Driver and CUPS setup

Find a driver for your printer. Google around for linux + printer make and model

You can also try to apt-cache search epson or whatever make of printer you have.

I found my printer drivers in:

apt-get install -y printer-driver-escpr

Install the CUPS print server

apt-get install -y cups cups-client cups-common cups-pdf

Edit the CUPS configuration to listen on the Orange Pi's IP (not just localhost):

/etc/cups/cupsd.conf

Change Listen localhost:631 -> Port 631 and then restart CUPS with service cups restart

This would be a good time to set a static IP or assigned IP for your Orange Pi via your router, so you can always find it by the same IP.

Then, open http://[Orange Pi IP]:631 in a browser on your network.

Add a user for cups administration. This adds the user pi to the lpadmin group:

usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

Go and Google Cloud Print Installation

Install the dependencies

apt-get install -y gcc make build-essential libcups2-dev libavahi-client-dev git bzr bison

Install Go

# install gvm
bash < <(curl -s -S -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moovweb/gvm/master/binscripts/gvm-installer)

# install go 1.4 (required for 1.6)
gvm install go1.4.3

# use go 1.4
gvm use go1.4

# install go 1.6
gvm install go1.6.4

# use 1.6
gvm use go1.6

# check go version
go version

Install Google Cloud Print Connector with (including the ...)

go get github.com/google/cloud-print-connector/...

This will install the binaries in /root/.gvm/pkgsets/go1.6.4/global/bin/, which we can add to the system path if so desired.

gcp-connector-util
gcp-cups-connector

Now run ./gcp-connector-util init and follow the guided prompts.

Start the service with

./gcp-cups-connector --config-filename gcp-cups-connector.config.json --log-to-console

And check https://www.google.com/cloudprint/#printers to see if your printer is available.

Finally edit gcp-cups-connector.config.json and choose your logging location.

Start on boot

To start the service on boot, use this awesome little script by Vincze Janos Istvan

Save this to some location, like /opt/gcp/startup.sh. You will probably need to mkdir -p /opt/gcp first.

#!/bin/bash
BINDIR=/root/.gvm/pkgsets/go1.6.4/global/bin
IFS='
'

ps aux| grep -v grep  | grep -q gcp-cups-connector
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Already running"
exit 0
fi

OK=0
while [ $OK -eq 0 ]
do
  YEAR=$( date +%Y )
  if [ $YEAR -gt 2015 ]
  then
    echo ok
    OK=1
    $BINDIR/gcp-cups-connector --config-filename $BINDIR/gcp-cups-connector.config.json
  else
    echo "Sleep for 1 secs"
    sleep 1
  fi

done

Add the following line to /etc/rc.local to run the script on startup:

/opt/gcp/startup.sh &

Links

Documentation for the board is here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_Zero#Powering_the_board