How to HP print thru cable from Chromebook,or from printer USB conn?

December 15, 2015 11:50 AM

I have a chromebook, for security reasons, and an HP printer, bought new this year. I don't use wireless here, for security reasons. Shouldn't there be a way the Chromebook can print to the printer w/o using wifi? Barring that, shouldn't there be a way that the printer with USB port can print a PDF from a USB stick, that I've put the file onto? What am I doing wrong here? Please tell me there's a way to have security and at least some function, both. (p.s. my username is no longer accurate, I moved away. Any kind decent mefites in Sacramento, I'd love to meet up.)
posted by Baeria to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I'll quote Acer's Chromebook support site, but it applies to all Chromebooks:

"Chromebooks do not support printing from local printers via USB port. To print from your Chromebooks, you need to connect to the Google Cloud Print service and share a printer"

That said, it doesn't have to be on wireless - if both the chromebook and printer are on a wired ethernet connection, Cloud Print works. Does your printer have a wired ethernet port? My HP printer does, but I don't know what model you have.

Most smart printers don't have the ability to render documents directly from removable storage unfortunately.
posted by GuyZero at 11:53 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you Guy. I had assumed that clouds were by def. wireless, but maybe not.
posted by Baeria at 11:59 AM on December 15, 2015

I hope the Cloud Print Service works for you.

My printer's only wireless option is Bluetooth, so I wound up installing chrubuntu. When I need to print, I boot into Ubuntu. Printing isn't exactly flawless but at least it's minimally functional.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 12:03 PM on December 15, 2015

Also this HP support doc lists which printers are compatible with Google Cloud Print.
posted by GuyZero at 12:33 PM on December 15, 2015

I plugged my HP printer into a Raspberry PI and using Chromium on the PI, export the printer as a cloud share. That way we can print from our Chromebooks and Android devices. It works pretty well until it doesn't work and then you have to reboot the PI and restart Chromium. That happens about once every two weeks. I followed these directions to set it up. There does seem to be a native cloud printer driver for linux now so that you don't have to fool around with Chromium but I haven't tried it yet.
posted by octothorpe at 2:02 PM on December 15, 2015

Response by poster: The other way to do this is to convert the PDF to JPG image(s), using Zamzar.com or some other file conversion website. Then copy to USB stick, plug stick in printer, tell printer settings that you want letter sized paper and not 4x6. Mission accomplished.
posted by Baeria at 9:07 PM on April 24, 2016