Printer Monitoring 🖨️ – via SNMP and Python

Automatic printer monitoring via SNMP as decentralized agents to allow for easy reporting and consumables monitoring 🖨️

Overview ⚡

Maps the SNMP OID values for various printer variants, queries them and reports the values to a REST API-backend for further processing, storing and alerting. Please note the REST API-backend is not included; alternatively you can use SMTP to report data via emails.

Requires Python 3; to use, simply install the dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt, set up your configuration and run python Printer-Monitoring.py --help 🐍

Run once-twice a day; Monitor; ???; Profit 💥

Configuration 🛠️

Edit the configuration file printer_config.txt (JSON) and edit the desired printers and variants.

1. client: Name used for identifying the tenant a printer belongs to
2. proxy: Send data to backend using a standard proxy, else leave empty
3. token: Token to authenticate data report against the backend
4. printers: List of all configured printers to query and monitor
   1. ip: IP address of the target printer
   2. variant: Most important setting for getting accurate data. This describes a printer's type to map the relevant OIDs for querying (see Variants)
   3. serial: Fallback serial number for clear identification, since OID evaluation can be unreliable
   4. description: Optional description to identify a printer, e.g. by indicating its location
5. Test your configuration and accurate data output using python Printer-Monitoring.py --debug

To deploy and run regularly use cron or Windows Task Scheduler.

Variants 📇

Variant	Description
xerox	Big Xerox printers, e.g. WorkCentre, AltaLink
xeroxbw	Smaller Xerox printers; e.g. VersaLink
xeroxphaser	Custom class for Xerox Phaser 7760
xeroxWC3225	Custom class for Xerox Workcenter 3225
hp	HP Color LasetJets etc
hpbw	HP LaserJet normal (B/W)
hpmfp	HP MFPs, in case the previous one does not work
HPM725BW	Custom class for HP M725
KCSW	Kyocera B/W-Printers
OKI	OKI printers
DICL	Develop ineo+ 450i

Docker Deployment 🐋

Run Docker using the Dockerfile and following sample command:

docker build -t printermonitoring . \
    && docker run -d --name printermonitoring \
        --restart unless-stopped \
        -v ./printer_config.txt:/app/printer_config.txt:ro \
        printermonitoring \
    && docker logs --follow printermonitoring

This allows running the script on e.g. Alternatively consider using docker-compose

Backend Sample

Example on what a tracking backend could look like. Storing historic printer data, indicating last consumables change, last report timestamp and showing the current state of the printer in a central dashboard