Cat Printer 0.3.1

Handles the printer's overheat protection.

Note

Programmed with AI. Code, protocol analysis and documentation were written by an AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude, via Claude Code) and tested by a human on real hardware (a YHK-… printer on Windows 11). Use at your own risk.

Fixed / new

• No more aborted jobs during a heat pause. After many dark prints in a row the printer stops for about 1–2 minutes to cool down and blocks further data. The old 15 s send timeout could abort the job; it now waits up to 5 minutes.
• Cool-down before the next job: the driver reads the printer's "head too hot" flag (bit 0x40 of DLE EOT 3) and waits until it clears, instead of letting the printer pause in the middle of an image.
• Visible status: "Zu heiß – kühlt ab …" (orange) on the tray icon and the status page, as the Windows printer state message, plus one notification.

Measured: five dark photos in a row (~30 cm in under 20 s) triggered the protection; the flag cleared about one minute after printing. Details in PROTOCOL.md.

Download

CatPrinter.exe – double-click: Yes installs or updates (settings are kept), No runs it without installing. For a fully portable copy, put an empty file named portable next to the exe.

Warning

The exe is not code-signed. Windows SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC" – click More info → Run anyway. You can also build it yourself with build.ps1 or run from source.

SHA256 CatPrinter.exe: C65A92036E1D80EC682AC0D8D46F909AC4EF08BFFFBB6FBB8C895A4199208FDA

---

🇩🇪 Kurz auf Deutsch: Der Drucker schützt sich bei vielen dunklen Drucken am Stück vor Überhitzung und pausiert. Die neue Version bricht dabei keine Aufträge mehr ab, wartet vor dem nächsten Druck, bis er abgekühlt ist, und zeigt „Zu heiß – kühlt ab …“ an. Zum Aktualisieren die neue CatPrinter.exe starten und Ja wählen.