01.Download ePrint zipfile
Print from a mobile with Dropbox
In the May/Jun 2011 edition of CHOICE Computer, we publish a tutorial on how to print from a mobile device using DropBox and a handy Visual Basic program developed by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration . This program runs on your computer and watches a folder in Dropbox for any files that arrive there, then sends them to be printed on your local printer.
You can drop documents straight into this folder if you have a mobile device that supports DropBox. As soon as Dropbox is synchronised with your computer, they’ll be printed.
If you don’t, you can send an email with the documents as attachments to an email address at sendtodropbox.com. You can get your own unique email address from the sendtodropbox website, and the site will then have access to your dropbox. It will drop any attachments it receives into a dropbox subfolder called “Attachments”.
We’ve provided Amit's code as a zip file you can download here .
For the technically minded...
Amit has developed two versions of his program, one that monitors “Attachments”, and so works with sendtodropbox, and an older one that works with its predecessor, Habilis, which used a folder called “PrintQueue”. Habilis is no longer supported, but unfortunately, it’s this older version that you’ll find in the zip file you can download from the Digital Inspiration page. It only lists the source code for the sendtodropbox version there, as we show below.
For the technically inclined, here are snippets of the Visual Basic code to show the difference:
Habilis version:
Sendtodropbox version:
