Badge printers

A badge printer is a peripheralA piece of hardware attached to a terminal, such as a badge printer, a receipt printer, an NFC reader, or a barcode scanner. A peripheral belongs to the terminal it is plugged into; other desks use it by pointing at that terminal. attached to a terminalA physical device running EventDrake's on-site software, such as a check-in tablet or a countertop unit. A terminal can have hardware attached, for example a badge printer, a receipt printer, or an NFC reader. Terminals are registered once, then paired to a station at the start of a shift. or a print server. This page covers getting one working; for when and how badges print at check-in, see Badge printing.

Supported printers

The following are known to work:

• Brother QL series: QL-700, QL-800, QL-810, QL-820, QL-1100.
• Brother TD series: TD-2320D, TD-2350D, TD-2125NWB, TD-4410D, TD-4420TN, TD-4420DN, TD-4250TN, TD-4250DN.
• Plastic-card printers: Magicard Rio 600 Duo, Magicard 300, Zebra ZXP3.

Most photo printers and other small-format printers also work. A single, more expensive card printer is often shared across desks from a print server rather than attached to one working terminal.

Add a printer

A USB badge printer is detected automatically when it is plugged into a terminal or print server. A network printer is added by hand using its address.

Enable it

Enable each printer

A newly detected badge printer starts disabled and takes no jobs until you enable it. Enable it before the event or nothing will print.

Paper size

Most badge printers detect their loaded media automatically, so there is usually nothing to set. If you know exactly what stock you are using, you can instead select from the available media sizes by hand.

Set the size by hand when:

• The printer cannot detect its media. Many plastic-card printers, for example, support both CR80 and CR79 cards with no media detection.
• You are using a continuous-roll printer, where the roll is one long strip cut to length, for example a 62mm continuous label.

We recommend a few test prints before the event to check whether auto-detection works for your setup, and only overriding the size by hand if it does not.