Cenaly Hardware Bridge — Your Venue's Hardware
A browser on its own can't print receipts on a POS printer, open a cash drawer or read weight from a scale. That's what the Cenaly Hardware Bridge solves — a small free app installed on the POS computer that runs in the background and connects the admin/POS page to your venue's local hardware.
Open: Admin Panel → Hardware (admin.cenaly.ge).
What it connects#
| Device | What for |
|---|---|
| Receipt printer (POS printer) | sale and refund receipts, pre-check, X/Z report, bag manifest |
| Kitchen printer | station tickets and 60×40 stickers — see Kitchen printing |
| Cash drawer | opens on a sale and manually |
| Barcode scanner | receiving, selling, marking |
| Scale | product weight on receiving and dish weight at the pass |
| Customer display | shows the guest the total and the items |
| Card terminal | card payments, reconciliation and end-of-day settle |
| Fiscal register | fiscal receipts per country — see Fiscalization |
| EGAIS (RU) | exchange with the universal transport module |
| Pour controller | draft-beverage accounting (tap flow meters) |
| Camera | short video clips attached to risky till operations — see Loss control |
The print queue#
Printing through the bridge is not "send and hope". The bridge keeps its own restart-safe job queue with retries: if the printer is switched off or runs out of paper, the job is not lost and prints once the device comes back.
Because of that, printing has five distinct outcomes rather than "worked / didn't": printed, queued (no paper yet!), printed by the browser, printed by the fiscal register itself, failed. The POS header shows a queue indicator with the number of waiting jobs.
Jobs are idempotent: re-sending the same document does not produce a second slip.
Details, binding printers to stations, and code pages for Cyrillic and Georgian — Kitchen and front-of-house printing.
Installing the bridge#
If the bridge isn't found on this PC, the page offers to install it:
- Download the version for your OS — Windows, Linux (x64) or Linux (ARM64) (macOS is coming soon). A SHA-256 is provided for verification.
- Run the app. Windows — double-click: the bridge goes to the background (tray icon) and opens its status page. Linux — prefer the one-line install as a background service, shown on the Hardware page (
curl … | sudo … bash): it starts at boot and restarts itself. Running the downloaded file by hand (chmod +x, then run) works too, but the bridge only lives as long as the terminal stays open and will not come back after a reboot; on Linux open the status page yourself —http://127.0.0.1:9100. - On the status page, confirm the bridge is running — there's no code to enter, pairing is automatic.
- Come back to the admin panel and click "Search again" — the POS finds the bridge on this PC and connects on its own.
If Windows shows a warning on download/run, that's expected: choose "Keep", and on run "More info" → "Run anyway". For Linux there's a one-line install as a background service.
Removing the bridge from a computer (Linux). The same one-liner from the Hardware page, with a subcommand — the page keeps them under "Linux — stop or remove the bridge":
… | sudo bash -s -- stop— stop the service and take it off autostart; files and settings stay,startbrings it back;… | sudo bash -s -- uninstall— remove the service and the program itself. Settings and the till pairing stay, and the script prints where they are;… | sudo bash -s -- uninstall --purge— the same plus the settings: the equipment list and the location binding. After that the till has to be paired again;… | sudo bash -s -- status— is the bridge running, and at which address (when 9100 is busy it takes the next free port, up to 9109).
On Windows use the usual Add/Remove Programs (the "Cenaly Bridge" entry) — its uninstaller removes the autostart entry as well.
A package for Ubuntu. On Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04 the bridge is also installed as the cenaly-bridge package — a .deb for amd64 and arm64 from the install page or the command curl -fsSL https://cdn.cenaly.com/linux/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- bridge (for an account on cenaly.ru — cdn.cenaly.ru). The package adds the Cenaly repository, and the bridge is updated with the regular Ubuntu updates; to remove it — sudo apt remove cenaly-bridge. An earlier one-liner installation is picked up: settings and the link stay, there is one service. Details — Installing Cenaly apps on Ubuntu.
Management and checks#
Once the bridge is connected, the page shows:
- Devices — a list with each device's state (connected / attention / error / not found);
- Hardware checks — a quick test of printing, scanning, weighing;
- Hardware settings;
- Live activity — a real-time feed of events (scan, weight, print);
- Update — if a new bridge version is out, you can install it right here.
Needs attention and time to update: devices across all locations#
The Hardware page has a “⚠️ Needs attention” block — device problems across all locations of the account in one list, so you don't have to check locations one by one. Each row shows the location, the device (and which bridge it is seen through), what happened and since when. Errors come first, then warnings; whatever has been broken longest is at the top.
The list includes:
- a bridge that is offline — its printers, register and scales are unreachable with it (the row says how many devices are behind it);
- a printer, register or scale with an error, “not connected” or a warning — with the reason as the person at the till sees it (“out of receipt paper”, “printer not responding”);
- a camera that is offline and a device on the PC without a working driver;
- a till or kitchen screen that has not reached the cloud for a long time, and a till holding records with an unknown outcome;
- an ad screen that stopped reporting or reports a playback error.
Silence threshold. A device that went quiet recently (the PC was restarted, it's night) is not treated as a problem: in “Silent for longer than” choose 15 minutes, 2 hours (default), 12 or 24 hours — the choice is remembered in this browser. Live messages from the bridge (“error”, “not connected”) are not affected by the threshold. A device taken out of service with “Disable” and a till that has never connected are not listed. The “Errors” / “Warnings” filters and the location picker narrow the list.
The “Time to update” tab shows each bridge's version next to the latest published one: “Up to date”, “Time to update” or “Unknown”. Bridges update themselves while online — one that is behind was usually off when the update came out, or auto-update is disabled on that PC; open the bridge page on that computer and press “Update”, or reinstall the bridge. Bridges older than version 0.31.0 do not report their version to the cloud and are marked “Older bridge — does not report its version”. Ad screens whose player cannot switch to the new build are listed there too.
The same tab lists tills and kitchen screens prepared for offline work. The Android, Windows and Linux app reports its version to the cloud when it connects (when someone signs in at the till, when the kitchen screen refreshes its documents), and the summary compares it with the latest release for that platform. Each row shows the platform, the installed version and — when it is time to update — the latest version number. How to update:
- Android — an app installed from the website updates itself; one installed from Google Play updates through Play;
- Windows and Linux — download the new version from the downloads page and install it over the old one (till settings and data are kept).
The web till and the web kitchen screen are marked “Web app — updates when the page loads” — nothing to do. “Older app build — does not report its version” means the device runs an app version from before version reporting — update it and the row will show the number. A till that has never connected since it was prepared is marked “Has never connected”.
The block adds no new checks — it gathers what bridges, tills and screens already report. If a location did not answer, “Some locations did not answer — the list may be incomplete” appears above the list.
Related sections#
- POS — where receipt printing and the cash drawer are used
- Receipts & refunds — printing and reprinting receipts
- Fiscalization — fiscal printers and online cash registers
- Kitchen and front-of-house printing — stations, stickers, the queue and code pages
- Products by weight and labels — working with scales, units and shelf labels
- Hardware: what connects — the class-by-class overview and minimum kits per format
- Telephony: your own PBX — phones and gateways need no hardware bridge and are set up separately
- Loss control — video clips of risky operations from the bridge camera
FAQ#
Do I need to enter a code to pair?#
No. Pairing is automatic: the bridge runs on the PC and the POS finds it via the "Search again" button.
Which operating systems does the bridge run on?#
Windows and Linux (x64 and ARM64). A macOS version is coming soon.
The hardware isn't showing — what should I check?#
Make sure the bridge is running (status page) and click "Search again". Each device's state and quick checks are available on the "Hardware" page. If the device still does not appear, open "PC details" for that machine in the account hardware registry: it shows everything the computer itself sees — drives with free space, connected hardware and every COM port with a note on who is holding it — which is usually enough to tell whether the problem is the cable, the port or another program occupying it.