Out-of-order screen won't go away

The booth keeps showing an "Out of Order" hardware error screen to customers, and you can't make it go away. Either you've fixed the underlying hardware and the screen is stuck, or something is genuinely wrong.

Symptom: Hardware error / out-of-order screen appears on the welcome screen or mid-session and persists.

Quick diagnosis

The out-of-order screen is triggered by the hardware watchdog, which is controlled by the toggle in Settings → Hardware Error Screen → Enable hardware watchdog. The watchdog watches the camera, printer, and PCB status pills and shows the out-of-order screen if any of them goes offline.

So the out-of-order screen appearing means at least one piece of hardware is offline right now. Find which one and fix it.

Step 1: Open admin and check the pills

If you can still get into admin (the 5-tap sequence usually still works):

  1. 5-tap → sign in.
  2. Look at the header bar Camera / Printer / PCB pills.
  3. The red one is the problem.

Fix the red one. The out-of-order screen should clear automatically when all pills are green.

Step 2: I fixed the hardware but the screen is still there

If you're sure the hardware is recovered but the screen persists:

  1. Look at the pills again. Sometimes hardware reports healthy briefly and then fails again. Confirm the green status is stable.
  2. Wait 30 seconds. The watchdog has its own polling interval and may not have noticed the recovery yet.
  3. Power-cycle the kiosk. This is the surest way to clear stale watchdog state.

After the reboot the welcome screen should appear cleanly with no overlay.

Step 3: Hardware is genuinely fine but the screen still appears

This is a bug or a subtle issue. Things to try:

  • Open Diagnostics → Run All Tests. Confirm every test passes.
  • Walk through a Free Play session to see if the booth actually accepts a session. If the session works fine but the welcome screen still has the overlay, the watchdog UI is stale.
  • Power-cycle.

If the screen reappears immediately after every power cycle, the watchdog is detecting something you can't see. Look at the booth carefully:

  • Is the camera lens cap on? (Some camera models report "no light" as a fault.)
  • Is the printer service door ever-so-slightly ajar?
  • Is the PCB COM cable loose?

Step 4: I want to disable the out-of-order screen temporarily

You're diagnosing a hardware issue and the out-of-order screen is in your way. You can turn the watchdog off briefly:

  1. Sign in to admin.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Find the Hardware Error Screen card.
  4. Toggle Enable hardware watchdog to off.
  5. The hint reads "This setting applies immediately when toggled". No Save needed.
  6. The out-of-order screen disappears.
Warning
Don't leave the watchdog off in production. Turn it back on as soon as you're done diagnosing. Otherwise customers will keep paying for sessions on broken hardware.

Step 5: Some other error overlay

If the screen isn't the standard out-of-order watchdog screen but a different error:

When to call support

Contact support if:

  • The out-of-order screen persists across power cycles AND all hardware tests pass
  • The hardware watchdog is fundamentally misbehaving
  • A specific error pattern is triggering the screen but you can't identify which component
  • You see the screen and immediately get a Camera or Printer error after power-cycling

Have the Booth ID, the screen text, and a description of what you tried.

Why the out-of-order screen exists

It's a safety mechanism. Without it:

  • A printer could be jammed for hours and customers would keep paying for sessions that won't print
  • A camera could be dead and customers would buy "photos" of nothing
  • A payment device could undercount and customers would lose money

The watchdog stops accepting customers when the booth can't complete a session. It's working correctly when it appears in response to a real hardware problem.

Verify it worked

The booth is recovered when:

  • The welcome screen appears clean of any error overlay
  • The Camera / Printer / PCB pills are all green
  • A test customer session completes successfully
  • The watchdog is back on in Settings

Common patterns

Out of order overlay every morning.

Hardware ages and fails overnight. Power-cycle as part of opening checklist.

Out of order during a busy event.

Sustained load triggered an intermittent failure. Power-cycle once; if it returns, take a break and let the printer cool.

Out of order after a power blip.

A USB device dropped and didn't re-enumerate. Power-cycle.

Out of order after no apparent trigger.

A hardware component is genuinely dying. Run diagnostic tests; consider hardware replacement.

Next steps