Project Background

Business Applications approached me to have a system developed to manage the printers and copiers that are rented out to their clients.

Requirements

• Periodically collect statistics on various page types printed or copied by each Client's Printer / Copier.
• Communicate with Printers / Copiers via SNMP.
• Easily add support for new Printers / Copiers without needing to roll out a software update to each Client.
• View and Export history of collected statistics for Printers / Copiers.

Actions & Outcomes

To collect the statistics I designed and developed a Windows application that runs on a machine within the clients network, which periodically queries all of the printers / copiers that are configured on their account via SNMP. The collected statistics are then sent back to a central database server hosted on premise at Business Applications via a REST API.

In order to add support for new Printers / Copiers without needing to roll out a software update to each Client, I designed a web interface which allows staff to add new printer types to a database and configure the SNMP OIDs that should be queried when fetching statistics for that specific printer / copier.

The web interface also gives staff easy access to create new clients, manage their associated printers / copiers and also view and export their statistics history.

Screenshots

MeterPlan Web Administration Interface

MeterPlan Windows Client Interface

Technologies Used