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Controlling the Brother P-Touch Cube label maker from a computer

The Brother PTP300BT label maker is intended to be controlled using the official Brother P-Touch Design & Print iOS/Android app. The app has arbitrary limits on what you can print (1 text object and up to 3 preset icons), so I thought it would be a fun challenge to reverse engineer the protocol to print whatever I wanted.

Python code at the bottom if you want to skip the fine details.

Process

Intitially I had a quick peek at the Android APK to see if there was any useful information inside. The code that handles the communication with the printer in Print&Design turned out to be a native library, but the app clearly prepares a bitmap image and passes it to this native library for printing. Bitmaps are definitely something we can work with.

Tabs and Windows

Function	Shortcut
New Tab	`⌘` + `T`
Close Tab or Window	`⌘` + `W` (same as many mac apps)
Go to Tab	`⌘` + `Number Key` (ie: `⌘2` is 2nd tab)
Go to Split Pane by Direction	`⌘` + `Option` + `Arrow Key`
Cycle iTerm Windows	`⌘` + `backtick` (true of all mac apps and works with desktops/mission control)

Whether you're trying to give back to the open source community or collaborating on your own projects, knowing how to properly fork and generate pull requests is essential. Unfortunately, it's quite easy to make mistakes or not know what you should do when you're initially learning the process. I know that I certainly had considerable initial trouble with it, and I found a lot of the information on GitHub and around the internet to be rather piecemeal and incomplete - part of the process described here, another there, common hangups in a different place, and so on.

In an attempt to coallate this information for myself and others, this short tutorial is what I've found to be fairly standard procedure for creating a fork, doing your work, issuing a pull request, and merging that pull request back into the original project.

Creating a Fork

Just head over to the GitHub page and click the "Fork" button. It's just that simple. Once you've done that, you can use your favorite git client to clone your repo or j

Steps:

Add Activation Code
Click Manage Proxy
Click Manual proxy
Add localhost in hostname

Activation Code:

I2A0QUY8VU-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

	/**
	* Retrieves all the rows in the active spreadsheet that contain data and logs the
	* values for each row.
	* For more information on using the Spreadsheet API, see
	* https://developers.google.com/apps-script/service_spreadsheet
	*/
	function readRows() {
	var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
	var rows = sheet.getDataRange();
	var numRows = rows.getNumRows();

	# Valorant Asia Pacific Servers
	# Note most of the servers are AWS Global Accelerator anycast IP addresses
	# https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/features/#Static_anycast_IP_addresses
	# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast
	# Last Update: 2023-01-09
	# ~CO7DFiRE

	# All Asia Pacific Servers
	13.248.193.101
	13.248.197.71

	// zod schema
	z.object({
	// valid if string or:
	optional: z.string().optional(), // field not provided, or explicitly `undefined`
	nullable: z.string().nullable(), // field explicitly `null`
	nullish: z.string().nullish(), // field not provided, explicitly `null`, or explicitly `undefined`
	});

	// type
	{

	------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	# PS : ChatGPT makes mistakes, consider "trust but verify" principle
	------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	#Events to Monitor
	https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/identity/ad-ds/plan/appendix-l--events-to-monitor
	------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	#run
	eventvwr.msc Event viewer
	------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Event Viewer(Local)-Windows Logs (shutdown / restart )



	Get-ChildItem -Path $folderPath -File -Recurse \| Where-Object { $_.Extension -eq ".html" } \| ForEach-Object {
	$fileName = $_.Name
	$fileCounts = @{}
	$content = Get-Content -Path $_.FullName -Raw
	foreach ($searchString in $searchStrings) {
	$occurrences = ($content \| Select-String -Pattern $searchString -AllMatches).Matches.Count
	$fileCounts[$searchString] = $occurrences
	}