Raspberry PI as Google Cloudprint Connector for Older Printers

Google Clouldprint is a great tool that allows you to print content to directly to your printer from anywhere, even if your printer is at home on the other side of the world!  Also, it will queue up the print jobs until your printer is turned on.   You can also share your printer with others, allowing them to print to it also, from anywhere.

However, only newer printers are Google Cloudprint ready.  This means that older printers need to have some other way to become Google Cloudprint devices... This is where Raspberry PI comes in.  For 40euro you can turn pretty much any printer into a Google Cloudprint device.  Regardless of whether your existing printer is connected via Wifi, LAN or even USB!

This is especially handy if you have just started using a Chromebook and just realised you cannot connect to your existing printer!  So, follow the various guides to get your new Raspberry Pi online, then follow these steps to set it up as a Google Couldprinter Connector for your old printer!  (RPi v3 is the best for this as it has wifi built in!)

FYI, Rasbian is the OS of choice for this howto!

Raspberry Pi setup guides:
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/howto-install-raspbian-on-raspberry-pi/
https://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianStartHere

Here are the steps to turn your Raspberry Pi into a Goole Cloudprint Connector:
From the command line, via either ssh or directly connected, run the following commands to install some required base software:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install cups libcups2 libavahi-client3 avahi-daemon libsnmp30
wget https://github.com/google/cups-connector/releases/download/2016.01.02/gcp-cups-connector-rpi-jessie-2016.01.02.tar.gz
tar xvzf gcp-cups-connector-rpi-jessie-2016.01.02.tar.gz 
sudo mv cups-connector /opt/gcp-cups-connector
sudo chmod 755 /opt/gcp-cups-connector/gcp-cups-connector* 
sudo chown -R gcp:gcp /opt/gcp-cups-connector 
sudo useradd -s /usr/sbin/nologin -r -M gcpcd /opt/gcp-cups-connector

Next step is to run the gcp-cups-connector-util script to initiate the connector on your raspberry pi: