Best Practices for Printing with an Epson TM-T88VI over Ethernet?

[JohnnySpag]

Any tips on best practices for setting up Epson thermal printers? We experience a ton of lag. We long ago disabled automatic printing of Online Order tickets, but even when firing manually from the Orders queue, some printers take forever or don't print at all.

LAN is super solid, our non-Covid POS is rock solid with these printers. Same issues with both Epson TM-T88VI and TM-M30. Similar issues printing via WiFi or Ethernet, but we strongly prefer a wired connection for our printers.

[JohnnySpag]

And more generally, does printing within Square actually work 100% as expected for anyone, or is erratic printing just part of the deal?

[AdamB]

Thanks for your post and welcome to Seller Community, @JohnnySpag.

Your printers should be working reliably and without any unusual delays. If you haven't done so yet, I recommend taking a look at our printer troubleshooting guide for some tips that might resolve this for you. If you've already tried those or you do and they don't help then I would give us a call so our support team can take a look.

[JohnnySpag]

Thanks for the reply @AdamB . Are there any resources available for the TM-T88VI specifically? We've been through the Printer Troubleshooting doc to no avail. Network is sound. Other devices and apps have no trouble seeing the printer. Square seems long delays, often doesn't print at all. Any specific advice here would be extremely useful. Thanks.

[AdamB]

I did a little Googling and saw that some people who had issues like this discovered that their devices had been given the same IP address by their ethernet router. Can you try powering off your printers, then turn one on, wait for it to be fully booted up, then turn on the next, etc.

[JohnnySpag]

Not the issue here, I’m afraid. IP addresses are assigned by the router, but by DHCP reservation. All devices have carefully monitored and recorded IP’s. 

For what it’s worth, these issues seem to lie with Square’s interfacing with the Epson hardware specifically. We have a couple of Star thermals on the network and they perform reliably. 

And both Epson and Star hardware print reliably from our primary non-pandemic POS, as well as directly from macOS and iPadOS. 

[Joe]

Hi @JohnySpag - stepping in for Adam in his absence here. Got it - thanks for double checking the IP address like Adam suggested.

It may not be a good plan of action to have you flag this over to our Support Team directly for more 'hands-on' troubleshooting. They can take a deep-dive with you and make sure we find you a reasonable resolution.