Odoo POS and virtual IOT box set up:
There are 3 ways to connect hardware (e.g., thermal printers, screens, keyboards, mouses, scales, bar code scanners, etc) to your Odoo database. In this blog, we look a bit closely at hooking up thermal printers to Odoo and to your POS system, arguably on of the most important compenents of a good POS installation.
As Odoo POS is a web based application, your device (e.g., thermal printer) will need to be able to communicate via the web to your off site database. There are a couple of ways to do this. We do NOT recommend USB connections in most cases. Networks connections are usually far more reliable.
1. Use EPSON thermal printers; just about any Epson NETWORK printer can be connected to your Odoo database thru the PC or laptop. Epson has some internal network and IP infrastructure capabilities that are not available in other brands of network printers. In any event, they MUST be network printers.
2. If you do have, or do not want to use Epson branded printers, you should consider installing the Odoo virtual IOX on your database (seperate subscription required), and connect your printers to Odoo via virtual IOT. The connection is relatively easy, and there is good documentation on Odoo.com or reach out your preferred Odoo partner installation expert. Here at Lighthouse Info-tech, we highly recommend everything be installed using a LAN connection, and local area network switches.
Here is a quick video describing what you can do with such an infrastructure set up on the LAN network.