Raspberry Pi + Receipt Printer = Hours of Fun

About a week or so ago now, I came across a compelling post from Hacker News about a guy who has configured a dot matrix printer to deliver his daily news. At first, I thought that this was a bit of a backwards idea considering we have smartphones for this but, as he says in his blog, it helps with cutting back on screen time to improve mental health.
This sold it for me, and I wanted to do something similar.
After searching eBay and other second-hand markets, I found that most dot matrix printers were either out of my price range or too old and difficult to find parts for. However, I noticed that some sellers were offering thermal receipt printers at a fraction of the cost.
I ended up getting an Epson TM-T70 for around about £40, although I'm sure you could get one cheaper. It also turns out that the same guy also did something similar for printing GitHub issues.
Personally, I think thermal printers are superior to most printers. It is pretty well known that printer ink is a scam (plenty of evidence on this) plus, it's not cheap or good for the environment. While laser printers have longer-lasting toner, they can still be costly and, like ink, aren't great for the environment either.
The benefits of thermal printers, on the other hand, don't require either. It works by heating a print head to selectively darken areas of special thermal paper.
Note. If you're going to buy a thermal printer this yourself, make sure you buy non-toxic BPA-free paper (like this on Amazon). Numerous studies (example) have shown how certain toxic chemicals in thermal paper can be absorbed into the skin.
Overall, having a thermal printing is relative inexpensive to run. The 5 pack 80x80mm rolls which I bought works out to around £1.40 each!
Anyway, equipped with my new thermal printer, I decided to start playing around.
I initially started with an old Raspberry Pi Zero W v1.1 I had lying around, but soon discovered that some of the software I needed only worked with newer ARM processors. So, I switched to one of the Pi4's I had in my home office, running Node-RED for automation with a user-friendly web interface.
Like many printers, including the Adafruit thermal printer, mine uses the standard ESC/POS command set, so I installed the node-escpos Node.js package to enable programmatic printing. I also set up CUPS, allowing me to print over the network from my laptop and even my iPhone, though it's still experimental. So far, I’ve configured it to print a daily report with a Bible verse, the weather, and a collection of RSS feeds at 7 AM when I start work (yes, it's early). I also have it printing selected Mastodon notifications and Met Office weather warnings.


Examples of how I use the printer include printing notifications and recipes.
Where next? Honestly, the possibilities are endless. I have also used my printer to print recipes, so I can prepare dinner without having to unlock the screen of my phone every few seconds. I would also like to use it to print labels too.