Supvan Printer Driver

Linux printer driver for Supvan thermal label printers. Provides an IPP Everywhere printer application via PAPPL and a command-line diagnostic tool.

The printer protocol was reverse-engineered from the Katasymbol Android app (v1.4.20).

Supported Models

All models use USB VID 0x1820. Bluetooth and USB HID are auto-discovered.

Family	Models	DPI	Printhead
T50 Series	T50M, T50M Pro, T50M Plus, T50s, T50s Pro	203	48mm / 384 dots
T80 Series	T80M, T80M Pro	201	72mm / 568 dots
G Series	G11, G15, G18, G18 Pro	193	25mm / 190 dots
TP76 Series	TP76I, TP76I Pro	305	76mm / 912 dots
TP80 Series	TP80A, TP80A Pro	305	80mm / 960 dots
TP86 Series	TP86A, TP86A Pro	305	86mm / 1032 dots
SP650	SP650	203	48mm / 384 dots

BT-only models (E10, E11, E12, E16) are also supported via the T50 driver. Katasymbol-branded equivalents (e.g. M50 Pro) work as their Supvan counterparts.

Supported transports:

• Bluetooth — RFCOMM (btrfcomm:// scheme), auto-discovered via BlueZ D-Bus
• USB HID — hidraw (usbhid:// scheme), auto-discovered via sysfs

Model data is defined in data/models.toml and can be extended without recompilation.

Crate Structure

Crate	Description
supvan-proto	Printer protocol: Bluetooth RFCOMM and USB HID transports, commands, status parsing, bitmap transforms, LZMA compression
pappl-sys	Bindgen FFI bindings for libpappl and libcups
supvan-app	PAPPL printer application binary (supvan-printer-app)
supvan-cli	Command-line diagnostic tool (supvan-cli)

Prerequisites

Rust toolchain (edition 2021) and the following system packages:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install libpappl-dev libcups2-dev pkg-config libclang-dev libdbus-1-dev bluez

PAPPL version compatibility

pappl-sys requires PAPPL ≥ 1.0 at build time (a hard pkg-config check). Build behaviour vs the linked PAPPL version:

Linked PAPPL	Builds?	USB hot-plug auto-add	BT auto-add	Notes
≥ 1.4	✅	✅ on service start	✅	Recommended. Uses papplSystemCreatePrinters.
1.0 – 1.3.x	✅	⚠ manual once	✅	Adds a one-line warning to the log on startup. papplSystemCreatePrinters isn't in the library; persisted printers reload normally, but a newly plugged USB device needs to be added once via the web UI (http://localhost:8631/) or lpadmin. After that it's persisted and works on every subsequent run.
< 1.0	❌	—	—	pkg-config fails the build with a clear version error.

Distro PAPPL versions (as of writing) — pick your install path:

• PAPPL 1.4 (full auto-add): Ubuntu 25.10+, Fedora 40+, Arch (current).
• PAPPL 1.3 (manual one-time add): Debian 12/13/sid, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, Linux Mint 22.x.
• PAPPL 1.0 (manual one-time add): Debian 11 (oldoldstable), Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Linux Mint 21.x.
• No system PAPPL (RHEL / Alma / Rocky): build PAPPL yourself, or use build-deb.sh which ships PAPPL 1.4.9 alongside the app.

On a distro with only PAPPL 1.3, you'll still get correct printing and the same protocol behaviour as PAPPL 1.4 — the only user-visible difference is that the first time a new USB device is plugged in, you have to add it manually once. BT discovery uses BlueZ D-Bus and isn't affected.

Building and Installing

make build                # cargo build --release
sudo make install         # installs binary, systemd unit, data files, udev rule
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

make install places:

File	Destination
supvan-printer-app	/usr/bin/
data/models.toml	/usr/share/supvan-printer-app/
supvan-printer-app.service	/usr/lib/systemd/user/
cups-cleanup.sh, cups-register.sh	/usr/lib/supvan-printer-app/
70-supvan-t50.rules	/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/

Re-plug the USB printer after installing the udev rule.

To uninstall: sudo make uninstall.

Usage

Printer Application

The printer application runs an IPP server with a web interface on port 8631. It auto-discovers printers via BlueZ D-Bus (Bluetooth) and sysfs (USB HID), and registers them as IPP Everywhere printers that any Linux application can print to. When both transports are available, USB is preferred.

supvan-printer-app server         # start the server
supvan-printer-app devices        # list discovered devices
# Web interface at http://localhost:8631/

Other PAPPL subcommands are available (printers, status, submit, shutdown, etc.). Run without arguments for help.

For automatic CUPS queue creation, enable cups-browsed:

sudo systemctl enable --now cups-browsed

Systemd User Service

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now supvan-printer-app

The service unit is installed by make install. The ExecStopPost cleanup script removes stale CUPS queues that were auto-created by cups-browsed, preventing duplicates across restarts.

CLI Tool

Direct printer interaction over Bluetooth or USB HID for diagnostics and testing. Pass a Bluetooth address or /dev/hidrawN path as the target.

supvan-cli discover                          # discover nearby printers
supvan-cli probe AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF           # probe over Bluetooth
supvan-cli probe /dev/hidraw7                # probe over USB HID
supvan-cli material /dev/hidraw7             # query loaded label info
supvan-cli test-print /dev/hidraw7 --density 4

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
RUST_LOG	Log level (debug, info, warn, error)
SUPVAN_MODELS	Override path to models.toml
SUPVAN_DUMP_DIR	Directory for debug image dumps
SUPVAN_MOCK	Set to 1 to run without a real printer
XDG_STATE_HOME	Override state file location (default: ~/.local/state)

License

MIT