# Using the DevTerm's built-in printer with mGBA to print Game Boy Camera photos

**URL:** <https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/using-the-devterms-built-in-printer-with-mgba-to-print-game-boy-camera-photos/21913>\
**Category:** DevTerm\
**Tags:** tinkering, hardware, devterm-a04, emulation\
**Created:** [March 24, 2026, 12:00pm UTC](https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/using-the-devterms-built-in-printer-with-mgba-to-print-game-boy-camera-photos/21913 "2026-03-24T12:00:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![omgmog](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.clockworkpi.com/omgmog/32/3553_2.png) [@omgmog](https://forum.clockworkpi.com/u/omgmog)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2026, 12:00pm UTC](https://forum.clockworkpi.com/t/using-the-devterms-built-in-printer-with-mgba-to-print-game-boy-camera-photos/21913/1 "2026-03-24T12:00:52Z")

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I’ve been using the DevTerm’s thermal printer as a Game Boy Printer, with mGBA running the GB Camera ROM and a cheap USB webcam as the camera sensor.

Getting the printer working took a bit of doing as I haven’t used the DevTerm in a while. My unit was still on the original Hirsute image, so I had to flash the v0.2h image first. After that the printer services came up fine, though the FPC ribbon cable was loose, which caused a “NO PAPER” error that took some strace debugging to track down.

I ended up forking mGBA to add thermal printer support directly to the Qt frontend. When a print job comes in from the emulated GB Printer, it fires straight to /tmp/DEVTERM\_PRINTER\_IN as an ESC/POS bitmap (no save dialog, no file written to disk, just prints). There’s a settings panel for density, contrast, dithering mode, and scale.

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/_-2-Nq5mP48/maxresdefault.jpg "Game Boy Camera to thermal printer on a #DevTerm A04 #gameboy #gameboycamera #gb") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-2-Nq5mP48)

Full writeup: [I turned my DevTerm into a Game Boy Camera and Printer — Max Glenister](https://blog.omgmog.net/post/devterm-gameboy-printer/)

Fork: [GitHub - omgmog/mgba at devterm-thermal-printer · GitHub](https://github.com/omgmog/mgba/tree/devterm-thermal-printer) with a pre-built binary for the A04 (aarch64, Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy).