Common UNIX Printing System on Low Power Embedded Device with User Access Management

Raspberry Pi is small size processor used in many applications due to its small size, processing power, simplicity. Raspberry Pi has overtaken the computer on the factor of less power consumption and form factor dimensions. Most of the Linux operating system based softwares run on Raspberry Pi since it supports running Linux operating system on it. The specialized OS used for Raspberry Pi is Raspbian OS. In traditional LAN based printer sharing topologies usually organizations employ a network printer, connected to a machine which is continuously running and exclusively used for printing needs. Such environments waste lot of compute cycles and power consumption sitting idle when printers are not actively used. We propose a method to share printer in LAN using Raspberry Pi and CUPS. CUPS is a Common UNIX Printing System used to print documents in Linux. Our efforts are more focused on creating a system which would act like low cost, low power consuming network printing server. The web based user management features like user authentication, keeping track of number of pages printed, add to set of additional functionality of the system developed.