Printer without pc?

babelfish

My dad is in his 80's and wants to be able to take pictures of his garden and print them out. He has an ipad and an older style digital camera but no pc. I was thinking of getting him this printer - Canon PIXMA MG3050 - but can you use it without a pc? I was thinking he may be able to plug his camera in to it via usb or air print with his ipad using the wifi? Im not sure though because Ive always used my printer with my pc.

(I think printers have a connection that allows you to connect to one of its ports to the USB on the pc but that they don't actually have a usb port for you to connect a device directly into it?)

DCFC79

Argos have the mg3650.

You don't mention a budget ?

Thinking about it you shouldn't need a pc to connect a printer if your printing off say the memory card or via airplay.

macman

That printer does not have a memory card slot. You can of course plug in a card reader to the USB port, but that's just one more complication, so I'd choose a printer with a card slot built in. If the printer is enabled, you can use Airprint. The only difference with printing via your PC is that you can do more manipulation of the files first, but it doesn't sound as if he needs that facility?

psychic_teabag

Wireless printing would require either bluetooth or wifi. https://www.cnet.com/how-to/five-ways-to-print-wirelessly/

wifi is usually done via a central "access point" but I assume he doesn't have one of those. (Usually comes with broadband, but doesn't requre it.) wifi can be done with ad-hoc wifi networking, but I think the printer would have to specifically support that. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201900 has a section on "If the printer can create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network"

https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer_products/pixma_printer_wireless_connection_setup/mg3050_printer_wireless_connection_setup/ seems to talk only about connecting the printer to the access point.


Some pages I googled say that iPad can print via bluetooth, others say you can't. I don't know.

USB connects a "master" to a "slave" - camera and printer are both usually slave devices, but modern devices can adopt either role as required. (I'm old-fashioned and don't have any of these.)

Simplest might be to simply take the memory card out of the camera and put it into a printer - but that might be a bit fiddly for him ?


If he's only going to print a few photos, is it an option to use either library or a high-street shop ?

EDIT: I should add that's it's easy enough to set up a wifi access point. There are plenty of old broadband routers lying around after people have switched or upgraded, so you might be able to get one off freecycle. They can be used to provide their wifi services without making a broadband connection.

babelfish

He has BT broadband and this is what he uses to connect his ipad to the internet. Is that what you mean by access point?

Budget is £30-40 and we don't want the print cartridges to be expensive. He can print them using my pc and printer but I just thought he'd like printing them out himself whenever he wants.

He won't be bothered about messing about with the prints. He just wants to point, shoot, print. If the picture is rubbish he'll just take another one and print it. Lol

psychic_teabag

Yes, the broadband should provide the wireless access point. And gives you the option of cloud printing.

knightstyle

HP did a siple camera and printer bundle a few years ago, under £100 for the lot.
You took pics and then put the camera on top of the printer and chose which pics to print.
There may be a later version plus Kodak did something similar.

DCFC79

knightstyle wrote: »

HP did a siple camera and printer bundle a few years ago, under £100 for the lot.
You took pics and then put the camera on top of the printer and chose which pics to print.
There may be a later version plus Kodak did something similar.

That's what I was thinking of, I don't think they do them anymore.

DCFC79

macman wrote: »

That printer does not have a memory card slot. You can of course plug in a card reader to the USB port, but that's just one more complication, so I'd choose a printer with a card slot built in. If the printer is enabled, you can use Airprint. The only difference with printing via your PC is that you can do more manipulation of the files first, but it doesn't sound as if he needs that facility?

Yes your right, it came up in a Google search result for " printers that print of SD card", didn't think I had to check the description.

macman

Even Canon's own site lists it if you tick 'SD card slot'. But the model spec does not mention it, nor do the pics show it.

Paul_DNAP

babelfish wrote: »

He has an ipad and an older style digital camera but no pc. I was thinking of getting him this printer - Canon PIXMA MG3050 - but can you use it without a pc?

Printing from the iPad would be a piece of cake on that one. The Canon PIXMA MG3050 has a "Wireless Direct wifi access point mode" which means you can print to it without a PC or a wifi router, connect the iPad directly to the printer with the Canon app. (Probably easier to have it on a wifi network if there is one though.)


Printing from the older style camera would be more tricky, it probably doesn't support pictbridge or wifi, so you'll need either a printer with the camera memory slot, or an adapter to import the pictures from the camera into the iPad and print from there (e.g. lightning to SD card or lightning to USB).