When you need a blank sheet of paper how do you get one?

Now I can get a sheet of paper from my paper storage box with a press of a button. The real challenge was to figure out that there was this first-world problem, solving it was easy.

DIY Printer Button

Since opening a tray to get a sheet of paper is not very convenient I wish all printers have the feature built in. I mean all paper storage boxes should dispense paper on demand out of the box. 🙂

See the magic button in action:

I used a Raspberry Pi, a push button and a Python script to make that little life hack. The script prints an empty file every time the button is pressed:



import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time
import os

while True:
input_state = GPIO.input(18)
if input_state == False:
print('Button Pressed')
os.system("echo | lp")
time.sleep(0.4)