Is any kind of wired printing possible?

[calzone]

My experience with the DNP is that sooner or later, it will choke. The only way around this problem is to reboot the WPS. Which requires telling everyone to stand by while you address technical difficulties, open up the photo booth enclosure, and unplug the WPS, count to 10, then replug it.

Not a professional image. This seems to happen when the Photo Booth is at peak usage (which is the worst possible time). But also happens when one group just decides they want to take another shot. Sometimes, it just happens for no apparent reason. But for the most part, it seems to be an issue with print jobs being fed too quickly.

I'm not prepared to buy one printer after another until I find one that produces nice high quality images, does it relatively quickly, and which is 100% reliable. So I'm contemplating selling the DNP — with barely any use and only a year old and hopefully finding a non-wifi solution because I just don't trust that WiFi is going to get the job done for these pro level printers. There's a reason they don't really support WiFi out of the box.

The only other alternative I see is to give up on having a WiFi / Apple-based Photo Booth altogether and use what it seems everyone else is using: Surface Pros and cables.

So is there some more reliable way to print? Thoughts?

[aluminumwelder]

there are a couple of competing apps that allow one to use a lightning cable that goes to a windows laptop. the laptop saves the image and then prints it out to the printer via usb cable. kind of a weird solution, why not just get rid of the ipad and use the pc is what I think. I've not found it any more reliable.

nothing is 100% reliable, you can think the grass is greener, but it's actually not, good luck finding your holy grail. I would start by calling dnp tech support and finding out what the issue is? no error message so hard to guess???

I think you can plug more then one printer into the WPS, seems that would be a good solution, you need back up gear anyways, first time printer fails one will relize it was cheaper to have a back up then give a refund. used dnp is less than $400, good luck.

[Dalia]

did anyone else have a problem with wps an dnp too? I bought this components and my first event is on saturday. now I'm very nervous

[tim]

That sounds very much like a problem with the DNP WPS software. That's something DNP could fix, if they could reproduce it.
My suggestion would be to get in contact with DNP directly and get support for your WPS this way - make sure they understand that unplugging the WPS and plugging it back in solves the problem, and that this isn't a valid solution for professionals.

[calzone]

Dalia,

My experience has been that the WPS + DNP works about 80% of the time as one would want. But for some reason, there are times where it just fails to print and an error shows up. If you try again, it keeps failing and will not print again until you reboot the WPS.

Sometimes when this happens, things will go back to running smoothly for a while. Sometimes, they fail again after just a one or two sessions. I haven't found a reliable pattern (other than heightened use seems to increase the chances).
At one event, I was purposefully engaging each new person or group to come up with a little patter and "introduction" to how to use the booth and trying to get them to use some props, etc… all as a way to make sure there was some downtime between the last person using the booth and the next one. It seems like if you wait for the printer to finish printing before starting a new session, you are likely safe.
Where that strategy failed for me is when people wanted to try again, two, three, and in some cases four times (happens with drunks groups and kids a lot). Once I released that, I stepped up my intervention even more… and stood in front of the booth and acted as the "button pusher" for them instead of letting them do it themselves… telling them to say cheese and all that… helping them figure out how well in frame they were, etc.

Obviously not ideal, but better than having things not working… and the people seemed to appreciate the attention.

[tim]

Hey calzone,
If you can determine a sequence of events such that you can reliably cause the WPS unit to get into this bad state, please let me know. Perhaps there is some way Wifibooth can slow down commands it issues, or some workaround we can find...

[calzone]

Hey calzone,
If you can determine a sequence of events such that you can reliably cause the WPS unit to get into this bad state, please let me know. Perhaps there is some way Wifibooth can slow down commands it issues, or some workaround we can find...

I cannot say for sure. I will try experimenting at home. My sense is that after the WPS sends a job to the printer and it's in the printer's memory…  then if another job comes in right behind it, there's some sort of "collision" and the WPS doesn't cue it so just gives up. Even if that is true, why that would cause it to continue failing doesn't make sense to me.

[tim]

The problem could be between the WPS unit and the printer, but it could also be an aberrant behavior on the WPS' behalf when Wifibooth is talking to it.
If you can find steps that make it go wrong all the time, I can probably help...