We all are pretty annoyed at how the printer industry is screwing customers over. There are a few printers that are really good but most of them suck and try to suck out your money by demanding ink when none is needed.
And i also know that it’s nearly impossible to create an open-source printer that can be build by smaller businesses like the 3D printing space can do.
But are there any projects underway to reverse-engineer printer firmware and make it possible to flash the custom ROM onto a printer? No specific manufacturer in mind right now, but wouldn’t that make things better? Simply disable all the stupid checks that claim that you NEED ink to scan or that you NEED yellow to print a black text?
Easy fix, go into your router and setup a local static IP for your printer. Sometimes called DHCP IP reservation.
It should give a list all devices and their mac address on your network. Select your printer, then put in the current local IP the printer is using or a new local IP (setting a new local IP will require you to turn your printer off and back on after you save the changes to ensure the new local IP is handed out to the printer.)
Save changes, and you should never have to worry about the printer changing local IP’s ever again.