Patent ID: 9676207
Date: 2017-06-13
CPC Classifications: B41J,G06F

Claim:
1. An apparatus self-contained within a housing, comprising: a hardware processor comprising a first general purpose input/output (GPIO) bus and a second GPIO bus; computer memory in which is stored an operating system and an application; a printer directly connected to the first and second GPIO buses of the hardware processor; and control logic executed in the hardware processor in response to a print request received from the application to generate a set of control signals; wherein the control logic outputs on the first GPIO bus pulse-width modulated (PWM) control signals operable to control a motor of the printer, the PWM control signals comprising pulses in the range from 10 KHz to 20 KHz generated by a general purpose timer coupled to an enable line of the motor, and the control logic outputs on the second GPIO bus bit-map image control signals associated with the content that is to be printed by the printer, and wherein the control logic comprises a printer object configured to communicate with an application programming interface (API) associated with the application and to communicate with at least one object configured to control the printer.