SYSTEMS & DATA / PROJECT

Printer Workbench

Printer health and supplies, on site and remotely.

In-house development · Desktop tool and collection agent

A model of Printer Workbench watching office MFPs across sites: remote sites, each with an agent rack and floor-standing MFPs, and the HQ site with the Workbench desk, its tower running the embedded agent, and its own MFPs. Floor ducts carry each agent's SNMP polls to its MFPs, and one cable per remote agent runs along a shared tray, through a coupler, to a floor box at HQ.

HOW IT WORKS

One Workbench, an agent per site, every MFP in one record.

Selected MFP: door open on toner, drum, waste toner
Agent rack: its buffer fills while the link is down
One cable per agent: tray coupler to the HQ floor box

Each agent reads the MFPs on its own network over SNMP v1, v2c or v3 with GET, GETNEXT and GETBULK, never SET. Its vendor profile matches sysObjectID, reads private OIDs and decodes them, so every device arrives at Workbench as the same record: toner, drum, waste toner, trays, page counters and alerts. A reading the device does not give stays unknown, never 0%.

Workbench runs its own agent at HQ and reports in process. Remote agents report over HTTPS with mutual TLS. Pull a coupler and that agent keeps its batches in a file buffer and retries at growing intervals; past the buffer limit the oldest batch is dropped and an event is recorded. Seat the coupler again and the buffer is sent in order.

Site names, devices, vendors, readings and timings in the model are demonstration data.

One view of printers
across multiple sites. — MACOS
One view of printers across multiple sites.
Workbench is a desktop tool with an embedded agent and a receiver for agents on other networks. Its dashboard combines device health, vendors, supply levels, alerts, and trends. Agent handles discovery, scheduled collection, and reporting. Screens use the English interface and demonstration data.
A remote agent polls its MFP and sends the record over one cable to the Workbench desk, where a row of the monitor's table updates.

From toner levels
to component life. — MACOS
From toner levels to component life.
Collect toner, ink, drums, belts, fusers, waste toner, trays, page counters, and device alerts. Normalize supply types, colors, and units alongside level trends and collection history. Unknown readings remain unknown; waste containers are interpreted by fullness. Available fields depend on the device’s MIB implementation.
An MFP with its front door open on the toner, drum and waste toner box that Workbench reads.

Bring field data back
over authenticated connections. — MACOS
Bring field data back over authenticated connections.
Remote agents send batches and health reports over HTTPS with mutual TLS. Workbench creates registration kits and manages certificate expiry, revocation, reissue, and remote configuration. SNMP credentials are stored with AES-256-GCM and excluded from kits. Failed deliveries are buffered on disk and retried with backoff; exceeding the buffer limit discards older batches and records an event.
When the coupler is pulled the agent buffers its batches and retries; once it is seated again the batches are sent in order.

Start with standard MIBs. Interpret vendor differences.

Supports SNMP v1, v2c, and v3 using read-only GET, GETNEXT, and GETBULK requests, with no SET operations. Table walks use GETBULK where available and fall back to GETNEXT after repeated non-response. Per-device timeouts, retries, and concurrency control collection load.

Printer-MIB (RFC 3805), HOST-RESOURCES-MIB, and MIB-II provide identity, supplies, counters, and health. Where exposed, collection includes Job Monitoring MIB, ENTITY-MIB, Finisher MIB, and PWG device IDs. IPP, LPR, and RAW print paths are read as MIB data.

Vendor profiles define sysObjectID matching, private OIDs, semantic roles, and decoders. Brother binary blocks, Ricoh level codes, and OEM identities become common records. Field runs can preserve raw walks and normalized results for replay and analysis.

SNMPv3 supports configurable authentication and privacy modes with SHA-family and AES options. Community traffic in v1/v2c is not encrypted. Device-to-agent SNMP security, agent-to-receiver mTLS, and local credential encryption protect separate parts of the system.

Java 25
Kotlin
Compose Multiplatform
SNMP4J
SQLite
mTLS
AES-256-GCM

The agent reads a v3 MFP with GETBULK and a v1 MFP with GETNEXT, and never sends SET.

Vendor profiles
with explicit verification scope. — MACOS
Vendor profiles with explicit verification scope.
Includes 22 profiles: HP, Canon, Epson, Ricoh, Kyocera, Brother, Xerox, Lexmark, Konica Minolta, Samsung, Sharp, Dell, OKI, Toshiba TEC, Sindoh, Pantum, Muratec, RISO, Olivetti, Panasonic, Zebra, and TSC. Coverage centers on printers and MFPs, with label-printer and some network-scanner identification. Brother MFC-L3760CDW has physical-device validation. Other coverage is tracked by recorded SNMP replay, simulation, or profile matching; fields vary by model and firmware.
The agent reads MFPs of different vendors and options, each through its vendor profile.

A shared collection engine for different environments.

Agent and the collector use Java 25 and SNMP4J. Asynchronous requests and per-device virtual threads support discovery and collection, with separate scheduling, normalization, reporting, buffering, and transport modules. The embedded agent reports in process; standalone agents use HTTPS.

Workbench uses Kotlin, Compose Multiplatform, and Coroutines. SQLite stores devices, snapshots, and receipt history; Jackson handles JSON and YAML. Bouncy Castle supports certificate issuance. Windows and macOS packages include the runtime, with English, Korean, and Japanese interfaces.

A Gradle multi-module build and JUnit tests separate protocols, MIBs, vendor profiles, collection, and runtime. Recorded data and simulators exercise normalization and transport. Field collection follows discovery, collection, recording, and export while preserving per-device failures and cancellation history.

Java 25
Kotlin
Compose Multiplatform
SNMP4J
SQLite
mTLS
AES-256-GCM

The agent polls every MFP at once, one virtual thread per device.

One Workbench, an agent per site, every MFP in one record.

One view of printers across multiple sites.

From toner levels to component life.

Bring field data back over authenticated connections.

Start with standard MIBs. Interpret vendor differences.

Vendor profiles with explicit verification scope.

A shared collection engine for different environments.

One Workbench, an agent per site, every MFP in one record.