Zebra LP2824

This is a linear thermal dot matrix printer, from Zebra, formerly from Eltron. Both brands are used interchangeably on the printers, depending only on date of manufacture. The printer may also carry the model number WS8240. The capabilities of the printer depend upon the firmware used, as well as the head and attachments. Differences to the rear ports of the printer vary by board.

The printer requires thermally treated labels, but no ink, as the head reacts with the coating to darken where heated. There are 203 or 300 dots per inch, depending on head, and 1D barcodes should be printed directly down.

Drivers
Due to the languages of this printer, EPL and, in some versions, ZPL, being well documented in their respective programming guides, there are many drivers avaialble for these printers. The two primary Windows driver versions are available from Zebra themselves, and Seagull Scientific, a company that makes a program for automating barcode labels. Both contain ads for other products, but the Seagull driver has more fine tuning available, as well as keeping a more uniform naming structure for printers, best in cases where the user may be using multiple models with the same raw code.

Most programs made to use these printers prints RAW format labels, bypassing the windows driver to some degree and sending the raw printer language, making for a much faster print job, usually about 1 second to send to the printer as opposed to 5-10 seconds for a complex label.

Since the printer can accept a well documented language, this leaves open the possibility of implementation on microcontrolers that may not otherwise have a capacity for a USB printer. Most versions have RS232 serial, and can accept it's use for printing and debug. This means that one can take the input from a serial scale, for example, and directly instruct the printer to document the weight.