See also

Other projects in the thermal-printing space: the prior-art drivers thermal-label leaned on while decoding protocols, the companion projects it pairs with, and a few things people built for the fun of it. Links are here because they're useful or were cited along the way — no affiliation implied unless the section says so.

Companion projects

Part of the same toolkit as thermal-label.

• burnmark-io — the burnmark label-design stack: a headless designer-core, Vue/React bindings, burnmark-cli for render/validate/CSV batch, and sheet-templates for Avery-style PDF tiling. Reach for burnmark when you need templates and production; thermal-label gives it typed printer access. (GitHub)
• mbtech-nl — small shared libraries, notably @mbtech-nl/bitmap, which contracts re-exports so bitmap payloads stay consistent end to end. (GitHub)

Prior art — other label-printer drivers

thermal-label's protocol docs cite these throughout. Most are reverse-engineering efforts in other languages; if TypeScript isn't your stack, one of them may suit you better.

DYMO D1 tape — LabelManager and the LabelWriter Duo tape side:

• labelle-org/labelle — Python driver for the D1 hardware family; the reference implementation of the ESC A..E opcode set and the skip-lines pattern.
• computerlyrik/dymoprint — Python predecessor of labelle (deprecated 2023).

DYMO LetraTag 200B — the Bluetooth-LE label maker:

• ysfchn/dymo-bluetooth — Python reverse-engineering of the LetraTag BT protocol: directive vocabulary, header format, and the result-code enum.
• alexhorn/lt200b — the earlier LT-200B effort; first to document the GATT topology and the advertised name prefix.

Brother QL and P-touch:

• pklaus/brother_ql — the established Python driver for the Brother QL raster protocol, built against captured hardware traces.
• tylercrumpton/brotherql-webusb — JavaScript / WebUSB port of brother_ql for in-browser printing.
• fuzeman/brother-label — Python driver covering QL and PT in one device hierarchy.
• nbuchwitz/ptouch — active LGPL-2.1 Python driver for Brother P-touch; the cross-reference for 128-pin head pin counts and PT firmware quirks.
• hannesweisbach/ptouch-print — older C driver for the same P-touch family.

One firmware hack also gets a mention in the docs: free-dmo/free-dmo-stm32 replaces a DYMO LabelWriter's STM32 firmware to drop the label-spool NFC authenticity check — bricking risk, and not endorsed here.

Browser-based printing, for fun

People keep proving you don't need vendor software — just a browser and a Web API.

• niim.blue — a polished Web-Bluetooth app for NIIMBOT printers; design a label and print it straight from the browser tab.
• Phomemo label web server — a tiny self-hosted page: type text, hit print, and the Phomemo M110 on your network does the rest.

Worth a read

• WebUSB Label Printer — Tyler Crumpton sets out to label his component bins, decides every existing way of printing is too much hassle, and — "like any good yak-shaving engineer" — builds brotherql-webusb (listed above) instead. The bins, he admits at the end, still aren't labelled. The whole reason projects like this one exist, in a single post.