Hardware: what connects

You do not need to buy hardware to get started: the storefront opens on the guest's phone, and the till is a page in a browser on any computer or tablet. Hardware comes in when you need paper, weight, barcodes or a fiscal receipt.

The main rule: a browser does not talk to retail hardware on its own. Between the page and the metal sits Cenaly Hardware Bridge — a free program for Windows or Linux installed on the same computer where the till is opened. To see your devices: Admin panel → Hardware (admin.cenaly.com/hardware).

Who needs what#

A fiscal register is needed where the country's law requires one, and in that case it is not a "later" item but a day-one one — check your country in Fiscalisation.

Three ways to connect#

An account can hold several bridges, each with its own role: universal, hardware, cameras or telephony. The account hardware registry on the same page lists every bridge and device across the chain.

Receipt and kitchen printers#

Through the bridge you print the sale and refund receipt, the pre-check, X and Z reports, kitchen tickets per station, stickers and the bag manifest.

• The working transport is the network one: a printer with Ethernet or Wi-Fi reachable by IP address (port 9100). The bridge can scan the local network for such printers, and the address can also be typed in by hand.
• What prints: the ESC/POS language — Epson TM, Star, Bixolon, Xprinter, Rongta and compatible clones; paper width 80 mm (42 characters) and 58 mm (32 characters).
• Non-Latin scripts: Cyrillic prints from a code page (CP1251/CP866), and a line the print head cannot render (Georgian, for instance) is drawn by the bridge as an image with a built-in font. Details — Kitchen and floor printing.
• USB and Bluetooth are in development: today a receipt printer connects over the network, Ethernet or Wi-Fi, port 9100. A printer on a USB cable or a COM port can be added in the wizard, but there is no driver for those transports yet — the device appears in the list with a note about its transport and printing falls back to the browser dialog; Bluetooth is being built alongside. "Cloud printers without a PC" (where the job goes from the server straight into the printer) will not exist at all: printing always goes through the bridge. The practical conclusion for today is to buy a model with Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

Jobs are not lost: the bridge keeps its own print queue with retries that survives a restart.

Label printers#

• How it connects: through the bridge, as a device with the "label printer" role.
• What prints: item and bag stickers (60×40 mm) at handover, shelf labels and stock labels with a barcode, name, price and best-before date — Stock, Kitchen and floor printing. Shelf labels can also be printed as an ordinary sheet on an office printer.
• What is missing: the native languages of label printers — the bridge does not produce ZPL (Zebra) or TSPL (TSC, Godex). The sticker goes to a 60 mm-class receipt head as a narrow ESC/POS document and is torn off on the comb; this has not been verified on real label hardware yet. Scales with their own label printing (CAS, DIGI, SHTRIKH-Print) calculate weight, price and barcode inside themselves — we do not drive their printing.

Barcode scanners#

• How it connects: straight into USB, no bridge needed. The scanner works as a keyboard: it "types" the code it has read wherever the cursor is, usually adding an Enter.
• What is supported: any scanner in keyboard mode. Marking codes and QR need a 2D scanner — a 1D one will not read DataMatrix.
• Where it is used: finding a product at the till by its code, intake and stock-taking in the warehouse, marking codes (Russia), parcel intake and handover at a pickup point.
• What is missing: a scanner in virtual COM-port mode — switch it to keyboard mode. Mobile stock-taking with the phone as a scanner is not there yet either.

The classic trap: the scanner obeys the computer's keyboard layout. With a Cyrillic layout active, Latin codes arrive in Cyrillic — switch the layout to Latin.

Scales#

• How it connects: through the bridge, over a serial port (COM or USB-COM).
• What is supported: scales that continuously emit a weight string into the port — CAS, Mettler Toledo, DIGI, SHTRIKH, Massa-K and no-name COM scales. The driver is a general one: it takes the first decimal number out of the string, so most scales work without model-specific work.
• Where it is used: the weight of goods at intake and the weight of a dish priced by weight at the serving counter — the weight lands in the line on its own. The live weight and a stability flag are visible on the Hardware page.
• What is missing: networked scales and USB-HID scales; scales with a truly exotic string format may need driver work.

Customer display#

• How it connects: it is a second screen, not a bridge device. Two options: open the display page on the till PC's second monitor, or install the app on a tablet or phone in the same Wi-Fi network and pair it with a PIN from the bridge status page.
• What it shows: the contents of the order and the amount due.
• What is missing: classic two-line VFD/LCD pole displays — they do not work as a bridge device yet, and there is no need to add them.

Cash drawer#

• How it connects: by cable to the receipt printer — into its DK socket (RJ-11/RJ-12) or over USB. On a command from the till the printer sends a pulse and the drawer opens; both connections are tested.
• Where it is used: opening on a cash sale and manually by button (at the till and on the Hardware page). A fiscal register can open the drawer too — the pulse comes out of its own socket, so a separate receipt printer is not required for that.
• Worth knowing: the drawer is opened by the device it is plugged into, so at a venue with two printers the drawer goes on the till printer, not the kitchen one.

Payment terminals#

• How it connects: through the bridge. Cloud ones — SumUp, Square, Stripe Terminal, Adyen; over the local network — Nexo/SaleToPOI and OPI (Ingenico, Wincor Nixdorf and compatibles). There is also a manual mode: the cashier charges on their own terminal and enters the result.
• What it does: payment from the till, several terminals at one venue with a choice at payment, and binding a terminal to the kiosk so the guest pays by card without leaving for a provider page.
• Important: the terminal stays yours: the provider's credentials (access key, reader id) are entered once in the device settings, and the money moves under your contract — we pass the amount across and receive the payment result.
• A terminal is not online payment. Taking cards on the website means a payment provider; it is connected separately and depends on the country: see Payments.

Fiscal registers by country#

The fiscal receipt is printed by your register, registered to your own legal entity; we are the transport and the queue. It connects through the same bridge.

Other countries, cloud fiscalisation gateways and what the product does not have yet are covered in Fiscalisation. On cenaly.ru the choice of device is covered separately: How to choose a KKT; the EGAIS UTM lives there too and is added as an ordinary bridge device.

A fiscal register is not a spare receipt printer. If the venue has no separate receipt printer, the bridge will not push our documents through the register: only a test print and the pre-check are allowed. A separate receipt printer removes that limitation entirely.

Tablets and PCs#

Tablets and monitors are attached to a location with a device login code — no need to type a login and a password on a shared device.

Phones, DECT and gateways#

Telephony runs in its own contour and needs no hardware bridge: the handset registers with the credentials of an extension directly on our PBX.

• Desk phones, DECT bases and handsets, ATA adapters, door intercoms, softphones — SIP phone setup: what to type into any handset plus per-brand guides (Yealink, Grandstream, Fanvil, Panasonic, Cisco, Snom, Poly, Gigaset and others).
• A SIM card, a city line, ISDN — through a gateway: GSM gateways and city lines.
• An operator number with no hardware — a SIP trunk.
• The whole picture of the section — Telephony.

The venue network#

• The bridge and the browser live on the same computer. The till page finds the bridge on the local address, with no code to type. A bridge on a PC where the panel is never opened (a server in the back room) is paired with a one-time code from the panel.
• The printer sits in the same network as the bridge, reachable by IP on port 9100. Pin its address down (a DHCP reservation or a static IP): a changed address means "the printer does not respond".
• The waiter's tablet, the kitchen screen, the kiosk and the customer display belong in the same network; the tablet till and the display pair with the bridge using a PIN that is only shown on the till PC's screen.
• Keep the guest Wi-Fi on a separate network from the till one — a guest has no business sitting in a network with tills and printers.
• The internet is needed for cloud features; the till itself keeps ringing up and printing without it — If the internet goes down.

Limitations#

• The bridge prints only from its own computer. Either a bridge on every till device, or cloud printing to a printer on another PC.
• USB and Bluetooth for printers are in development: the network transport is what works today (Ethernet or Wi-Fi, port 9100). Cloud printers without a PC will not exist at all: printing always goes through the bridge.
• Label printer languages (ZPL/TSPL) are not supported — the sticker prints as ESC/POS on a receipt head and has not been verified on real label hardware.
• The scanner works in keyboard mode only, scales over COM only, the customer display as a second screen only.
• Pour control (tap flow meters) is a skeleton: the "poured vs sold" report works, but until a physical sensor is connected the "poured" side shows demo data, and the page says so plainly.
• There is no macOS build of the bridge yet — Windows and Linux.

Troubleshooting#

The short version of what to check first; the full symptom-by-symptom walkthrough is in Troubleshooting.

FAQ#

Do I have to buy a cash register?#

Only if your country's law requires one. The till itself is a browser page on an ordinary PC or tablet; the hardware register is for the fiscal receipt, see Fiscalisation.

Which receipt printer should I buy?#

A model with Ethernet or Wi-Fi that speaks ESC/POS, 80 mm or 58 mm. USB and Bluetooth are still in development, so "the cheapest USB printer" will not print today.

Can receipts be printed without the bridge?#

Till documents — yes, through the browser's ordinary print dialog. Kitchen tickets and stickers — no, only through the bridge. The exception is a venue whose only hardware is a fiscal register: there the register prints the receipt itself and the browser fallback does not kick in.

The printer is attached to another computer — do I need to run a cable?#

No. The "Print from another PC" action in the hardware registry creates a link to that printer, and the job travels through the cloud to the bridge that owns it. All that is required is that both bridges serve the same location.

Will an Android smart terminal (SUNMI, PAX, MSPOS) work?#

As a tablet with a browser — yes, the till will open on it. Our bridge does not use its built-in printer, second screen or fiscal module.

Related articles#

• Cenaly Hardware Bridge — installing the bridge, the device list, checks, the hardware registry
• Kitchen and floor printing — stations, stickers, the print queue, code pages
• Fiscalisation — fiscal registers and cloud gateways by country
• POS — where all of this is used
• QR codes and device codes — attaching tablets and monitors
• Telephony: your own PBX — the section this telephony hardware belongs to
• SIP phone setup · GSM gateways and city lines — telephony hardware
• Troubleshooting — a symptom-by-symptom walkthrough