Frozen golf simulator bay? A remote fix playbook

By the Bunkerbay team · October 2026 · 5 min read

It's 9pm, a customer's mid-round and the screen has frozen. What happens in the next five minutes decides whether you lose an hour's money and a review, or nothing at all.

What usually freezes

Most faults are cleared by a restart. The trick is doing it quickly, in the right order, without anyone driving to site.

A safe restart order

1. Restart the one thing that's stuck, not the whole bay. Usually that's the sim PC.
2. Wait for it to come back before touching anything else. Two or three minutes is normal.
3. If the screen's still blank, restart the projector. Check your projector's manual first: some need to cool down before their power is cut, and cutting it hard and often shortens their life.
4. Only then restart everything, and if that doesn't work, stop. Repeated power cycling won't fix hardware.

Doing it remotely

To restart kit without being there, each item needs to be on power you can switch from your phone, through a switchable power unit or smart sockets on the bay's PC, projector and screen. Then a restart is a tap, not a trip.

• Label everything by bay and device, so "Bay 3 projector" is the socket you think it is.
• Get told if it doesn't come back. An alert after a failed restart means you can call the customer before they call you.
• Log every restart by bay. One bay freezing three times a week is a hardware job, not bad luck.

Three things that cause restarts you didn't ask for

• "Auto-reboot" on smart power strips. Some switchable power units restart a device by themselves if they think it's stopped responding. That can cut a sim PC mid-session. If yours has the feature, turn it off and restart deliberately.
• Mains blips. A flicker in the supply can restart every PC in the building at once. If it happens often, ask your electrician about backup power for the kit.
• Touchscreens that won't wake. Many can't be switched on reliably from a distance, so venues often leave them on. Know which of your devices can and can't be restarted remotely before you need to.

What to tell the customer

Speed and honesty matter more than the fix itself. Something like:

Then confirm it's working. If it isn't, say so and offer the time back. A quick, honest reply turns a fault into a good story; silence turns it into a one-star review.

When to send an engineer

• The same bay fails repeatedly in a week
• A restart doesn't bring the kit back
• Anything smells hot, buzzes or flickers
• The fault affects every bay at once (often network or power)

What it looks like in practice

In Bayi's first three days live at Bunkerbay, two frozen bays were restarted remotely while the customers were still in them. Neither needed anyone to go to site.