The floor

Starting and ending sessions, the four ways time can be sold, pausing, moving players, and drawing the room the way it really is.

How does CoinOp charge for a pool table by the hour?

Start a session when the players rack up and CoinOp runs the clock, pricing it from the table's rate profile. It can be sold four ways: open-ended by the hour, a fixed block of time, a set price, or per player. Sessions can be paused, moved to another table, and end themselves.

The room, as it is now

Rows are the quick answer; free layout puts each table where it actually stands, in a room you size to match.

The floor is the screen staff spend the night on. Every station is a tile: what it is, who is on it, how long they have been there and what they owe so far.

The floor screen showing billiards tables, console pods, racing simulators, a screening room and a karaoke room — Free is green. In use is amber. Paused is pink. A prepaid block that has run out flashes red and says TIME UP until somebody deals with it.

Amounts on the tiles are live — they climb while you watch, because that is what the customer is being charged. The clock keeps running correctly even if the till goes to sleep or the machine’s clock jumps.

Starting a session

A table checked in, played, and paid for.

Tap a free station.

The check-in sheet, with a name field, player or guest, and the ways time can be sold — A name is optional and worth typing — it is what the floor tile shows, and what staff use to find the right table when four are running.

There are four ways to sell the time, and a venue can switch off any it does not use:

Regular

The meter runs against the rate profile. What most sessions are.

Flat per hour

An agreed hourly price for this session only — a negotiated rate, without editing anything.

Fixed charge

One price however long they stay. Parties, the screening room, an event.

Time block

Minutes that count down and stop. The tile shows the time left and flashes when it is gone.

A prepaid block is the same as a time block except it is paid for on the way in: the sale is rung up and receipted at check-in, and the table closes itself when the time ends.

Players are charged for time. Guests are companions — they sit at the same table, appear on it, and accrue nothing. On a per-player rate, adding a second player is what moves the table onto the two-player price.

While it is running

A running table's panel, with pause, move, order, checkout and per-player actions — Tapping a busy station opens everything you can do to it.

Pause stops the clock and the money. Breaks, a fault, a customer stepping out.
Move takes the session — time, food and all — to another station. The bill follows.
Order puts food and drink on that table’s bill from the menu.
→ Tab moves it onto a named tab, for a group running several tables.
History shows exactly how the charge was worked out, rate change by rate change. It is what you open when a customer questions the total.
Checkout ends the session and sends the bill to the register to be paid.

Correcting a start time, voiding a session and discounting are all things a member of staff can be allowed to do, allowed to ask for, or not allowed at all — see Staff and devices. Whichever it is, it is recorded with who did it and who approved it.

Drawing the room

The floor has two layouts. Auto rows arranges stations in tidy rows and needs no setup. Free layout lets you put each one where it actually stands, so the screen looks like the room — which is how staff find table 7 without reading twelve labels.

The floor in edit mode, with a grid, and buttons for auto rows, free layout, styling and resetting positions — Press Edit floor, then drag stations by their handle. Stations stay the size they are used at while you arrange them, so what you lay out is what you get.

The station designer, offering tile sizes including portrait, colour, font size and icon size — Tap a station while editing to change just that one: its size and shape, including tall tiles for a row of consoles, its colour, and how big its name and icon are drawn.

Style all applies a size or a font to every station at once — the fastest way to make a floor readable across a dark room. Reset positions puts everything back into rows.

The room is a fixed size and every screen shows all of it, so moving one station moves that station and nothing else: no tile changes size because another one was dragged, and the plan looks the same on the counter monitor as on the tablet. If the tiles are smaller than you want, spread them across the room or make them bigger in Style all — both stay done.

A station that is out of action

Mark a station down and it greys out, refuses new sessions and says why. The cue you gave the staff is on the screen rather than on a sticky note on the table.

Lights over the tables

Settings → Lights

If your table lights are on Insteon switches, CoinOp can run them: a station’s light comes on when somebody checks in and goes off when they leave, and a paused table goes dark with them. Nobody walks the room at closing, and nobody lights an empty table for three hours.

The lights settings page: the Insteon hub's address, and a switch assigned to each station — Point it at the hub, then give each station the switch above it. There is a test button per station, which is how you find out you have swapped two of them without waiting for a customer to sit down.

Without a hub configured it runs in simulation: everything works and the commands are logged instead of sent, so the wiring can be set up and checked before the hardware arrives.