Printing and devices

Server Direct Print over Wi-Fi, registering counters and screens, kitchen stations, and how bills and tickets print themselves.

Everything on this page is set in the console, under Settings → Devices & KDS. Five tabs, in the order you set an outlet up: Counters & screens, Kitchen, Floor, Billing & close, and Receipt details.

Server Direct Print

An Epson printer on your venue’s Wi-Fi can fetch bills from Maska by itself. No cable, no driver, no laptop in the middle. That is what makes an iPad counter possible.

The printer asks Maska every few seconds whether there is anything to print, and prints it. You never add a printer by hand: it registers itself the first time it asks.

Setting one up

1. Get the printer onto the venue Wi-Fi and note its IP address from its own status sheet (hold the feed button while switching it on).
2. In the console, open Counters & screens and copy the Server Direct Print address with its copy button. Paste it somewhere you can reach from the browser you will configure the printer in, a note or an email to yourself. Never retype it by hand: the address ends in a long code and a single wrong character means the printer knocks forever and is never let in.
3. Open the printer’s configuration page and find Server Direct Print. On an Epson TM-m30 series printer the exact clicks are below.
4. Set Server Direct Print to Enable. Paste the FULL address into URL 1. Set Interval 1 to 5 seconds. Put a short name of your own in the ID field, such as frontcounter. The ID is the printer’s identity and it is not optional: a printer polling without one is ignored and never appears in the console. Leave the password field blank.
5. Save, then restart the printer once.
6. Within about fifteen seconds it appears in the console as Online.
7. Press Use for bills on the printer the counter should print at.
8. Raise a bill. It prints by itself.

On an Epson TM-m30 series printer. The configuration page lives at https:// followed by the printer’s IP address. Note the s: the plain address often shows only a status page. Accept the browser’s certificate warning, and sign in as user epson with the printer’s serial number as the password (it is on the sticker under the printer and on the status sheet). In the left menu, open TM-Intelligent, then TM-i Settings. Server Direct Print is on that page.

Copy the address when it is made. It is shown in full once. Afterwards only its first few characters are shown, and the only way to get a full one again is to make a new address, which means pasting it into every printer. Rotating an address orphans every printer still on the old one.

If it does not come online

• Nothing appears in the console. The address in the printer is wrong or incomplete. Re-paste the whole address; if it was made a while ago, make a new one and paste that.
• Still nothing, and the address is right. The ID field on the printer’s Server Direct Print page is blank. Give it a short name and restart the printer.
• It printed, but the card shows an error or a bill reprints. Do not keep restarting the printer: a restart clears its memory of what it already printed, which is the one thing that can turn a hiccup into duplicate slips. Leave it running and check the card’s error text.
• Avoid restarting the printer during service for the same reason. Restart it when the queue is empty.

The printer list

Each printer shows its name, badges saying whether it does Bills or Tickets for a station, a line with its id, its polling interval and when it was last seen, and a status of Online, Offline or Switched off. A printer with a problem shows its own error code unchanged, so it can be looked up.

Per printer you set the paper width (80 mm or 58 mm), its role (Receipts or Station), and for a station printer, which station. You can rename it, deactivate it, and press Use for bills.

The console warns you when no printer is set for bills yet, and when bills have failed to print or are waiting on a printer.

What prints by itself

Bills. With a printer routed for bills, raising the bill prints it, with no prompt and no second tap. It happens exactly once, so re-raising the same bill prints nothing more. Comped and zero-value bills still print. A printer problem can never delay or fail the raise itself.

Kitchen tickets. A printer given the Station role and pointed at a station prints that station’s tickets the moment lines fire. One job per station, so a ticket spanning the grill and the bar is two slips in two rooms. One printer per station at most. A station shown on a kitchen display, or with no printer, simply prints nothing, and that is not treated as a failure.

Counters and screens

A counter is registered in the console and paired at the machine. Registering one gives you a token, shown once. On the counter, open the pairing screen, enter the token, and it is paired. A paired counter is where that outlet’s tickets and bills print, and it is the one that can settle cash and close the day.

A screen signs in rather than pairing.

Per device you can set a name, a printer reference, a paper width, and whether the receipt prints automatically. A device can be revoked.

Kitchen stations

A station is a place in the kitchen that tickets go to: grill, tandoor, bar. Each has a routing key, a name, an optional emoji, an optional printer reference and a sort order.

Which station a dish fires at is set on the dish itself, in the console’s menu. Until it is set, the dish shows as unrouted.

Kitchen timing sets when a ticket on the display turns amber and when it turns red, in minutes, and whether a chime sounds when one goes red. See The kitchen display.

Receipt details

Your legal name, address, GSTIN, FSSAI licence, SAC code and place of supply, as they print on every bill. Receipts print a placeholder until this is filled in, so set it before you issue real invoices.