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Help Remote Bluetooth Printing From Tablet

Gus Kramer

Gus Kramer

Lurker
Hello, I'm Yohan from Venezuela.

Here's my current situation and problem:

I currently have a .exe in Windows XP that prints on a printer via bluetooth.

What I want to do, is to be able to use this exact same .exe to print from a tablet to a bluetooth printer.

What ideas you suggest? I have thought of the following:

Use Bochs in Android to run Windows XP, install the .exe there print via bluetooth, the thing is, I don't know if a virtualized Windows XP installed in Bochs will have the bluetooth function.

I was thinking if there was a way to connect remotely from the tablet to the PC that has the .exe and then have some software that will take the bluetooth from that PC and emulate it on the tablet to send the signal from the tablet to the printer.

Is any of this possible? It's for my job, and I have been asigned this project since yesterday, been looking all over internet with no luck.

Thanks for anything you can help with guys!
 
Is the Bluetooth printer using that .exe the default on the PC? If so, surely you could print using wifi connection between tablet and PC?
Could you not use the tablet to send direct to printer and cut out PC? It would save installing Bochs which you don't know will work.

Perhaps I'm missing something but what is the importance of this exe file?
 
The .exe is a Point of Sale from one of our customers (we sell the standard printers). What he wants to do is be able to now ùse his PoS in his tablets (here is another issue, I need to find a way to open that .exe on Android or remotely view the .exe from PC or something) and print on the bluetooth printer, but the bluetooth must come from the tablet, not the PC.

Thanks for the reply man!!
 
Hi Yohan, and welcome to AF :)

I merged your two threads on the topic so that folks don't get confused when trying to help out, and so that you don't have to explain yourself twice. :thumbsupdroid:

I don't think you're going to have much luck trying to run the .exe on the Android tablet - for printing or other Point of Sale operations. Windows and Android are completely different environments. Even trying some manner of virtualization isn't going to do what you want, and it would be a clunky/ugly/fragile setup that your customer probably will not want to use anyway.

What kind of printer is it? You *may* be able to find a way to get Android to print to it natively, but we'll need to know exactly what the hardware is.

Otherwise, your best bet would probably be to contact the vendor of the POS software to see if they have any Android versions of their application.

Sorry I couldn't bring you better news. :(
 
Hello codesplice, thanks for your kind reply!

Sorry about the double post, wasn't sure what section would be the correct one.

Yeah, you're right. Check this out, I'm going to explain better what would work for me:

There's a PC running PoS.exe. PoS.exe installed on the PC prints via bluetooth on Printer1. Now let's add to the environment Tablet1.

I know there is a way to see remotely the PoS.exe installed in the PC from Tablet1. (For example I could do it with TeamViewer installed on Tablet1, connect to the PC and will be able to see and run the PoS.exe installed on the PC) Also, I am currently able to print via bluetooth from Tablet1 to Printer1. The question would be: Is there a way that PoS.exe installed in the PC see's a COM Port that actually connects via ethernet/wifi to the Tablet1's bluetooth port? The idea is that the PoS.exe is installed in the PC, the PC is being seen remotely on Tablet1, but when I make PoS.exe print, it will connect to Tablet1 via ethernet/wifi and Tablet1 will connect to Printer1 via bluetooth to get my final print out.

This is what I'd like to know if it's possible.

Even if you wouldn't know how, I would also like to know if it's possible, because at this point I'm not sure that this is possible. I'll keep searching online and will update the thread if I get an answer from somewhere.

Again, thanks alot!
 
Okay, so you're talking about remotely accessing the PC from the Tablet (via TeamViewer or similar), but configuring it in such a way that hitting "Print" (in the app on the PC) reroutes to the Bluetooth on the Tablet, and then the Tablet actually sends the print job to the Printer?

No, I don't think that's going to be possible either. TeamViewer and other remote desktop systems pretty much carry video only. They don't give either the client or the server access to the other device's actual resources, it just shows them a picture of those resources (if that makes sense). Doing it outside of TeamViewer could theoretically be possible, but it would require custom-coded application support on the PC and on the Tablet. I kind of doubt that's actually an option in your case.
 
Thanks again for your reply! It doesn't have to be specifically with TeamViewer, it was just an example, but anyways, if all the other applications would just be a carry video only application, it could be possible that my company can do what ever extra is to be done outside TeamViewer. Anything you can point me to in that case?
 
Nope, I'm afraid I can't suggest anything. Yours is a problem I've never attempted to solve before. :D

Do let us know if you figure something out though - you've got my interest for sure!
 
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