--- title: "Court Access Control & Automatic Lighting for Sports Clubs | SportyPlus" description: "How SportyPlus turns a booking into a working PIN code and a lit court, using WebLock access controllers, Shelly relays and Tweener LED lighting." lang: "mk" canonical: "https://www.sporty.plus/mk/blog/court-access-control-and-lighting" --- 1. [Почетна](https://www.sporty.plus/mk) 3. [Блог](https://www.sporty.plus/mk/blog) 5. Court Access Control and Lighting: How SportyPlus Opens the Gate and Turns On the Lights ![Court Access Control and Lighting: How SportyPlus Opens the Gate and Turns On the Lights](https://www.sporty.plus/_og/r/blog/court-access-control-and-lighting.png) # Court Access Control and Lighting: How SportyPlus Opens the Gate and Turns On the Lights How SportyPlus turns a booking into a working PIN code and a lit court, using WebLock access controllers, Shelly relays and Tweener LED lighting. A court booking is really two promises. The first is that the court is yours from 19:00 to 20:30. The second, unspoken one, is that you will be able to get in, and that you will be able to see the ball. Most clubs keep those two promises with a person. Someone sits at a desk, buzzes players in, and walks out to the fuse cupboard to flip the lighting breakers. It works, and it costs a salary. It also fails in exactly the situations where members care most: the 06:30 booking before work, the 21:00 booking after it, the Sunday nobody is rostered. Automating those two promises is what turns a staffed facility into one that runs itself. This guide covers how SportyPlus does it — what happens at the moment a booking starts, which hardware does the work, and what you actually have to install. ![Floodlit courts at Delaire Country Club, Delray Beach, Florida, seen from the air at night](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/tweener-delaire-country-club-night.jpg) _Delaire Country Club, Delray Beach, Florida. Lighting by Tweener._ ## The principle: the booking is the permission Almost every bad access-control setup at a sports club comes from the same mistake — treating access as something you administer separately from bookings. You end up with a shared gate code the whole membership knows, which means it has effectively been public since 2019. Or you end up with per-booking codes, which sound secure and are miserable in practice: the member has to find the right email at 06:25 in the rain, and the club has to handle the calls from everyone who cannot. SportyPlus takes a third route. Every member gets **one permanent PIN code** — the same code, all season, easy to remember. What changes is not the code but whether it currently opens anything. The system checks the code against that member's active bookings: right court, right time window, the door opens. Wrong time, or no booking, and the same code does nothing. That is the whole design, and it is worth stating plainly because it decides everything downstream: - Members memorise one number instead of hunting for an email. - A cancelled or moved booking revokes access automatically, because the booking _is_ the permission. - A member who leaves the club stops having access the moment their membership ends — no lock rekeying, no code rotation, no note to whoever mans the desk. - Every entry is logged against a person and a booking, so "who was on court 3 when the net got damaged" is a query, not an investigation. The same logic drives the lights. Lighting comes on at the start of the booking and goes off at the end. Nobody has to remember to switch it off, which is where clubs quietly lose most of their lighting budget — a floodlit court left burning until the morning is a genuinely expensive mistake. ## WebLock: the access side For access control we work with [WebLock](https://weblockonline.com/), an Estonian access-control company whose system is built around a cloud service and a small controller that sits at the door. The current controller is the **[DLA Controller v4](https://weblockonline.com/dla-controller-v4/)** — DLA is Digital Lock Access — and it is the piece that connects the WebLock cloud to the physical locks and keypads at your facility. ![The WebLock DLA v4 access controller board](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/weblock-dla-v4-controller.jpg) _The WebLock DLA v4 controller. Image: WebLock._ What matters for a sports club: - **Each controller handles up to two entryways.** For most clubs that means the main gate and the clubhouse door on one unit, or two court gates. A four-court facility with individually gated courts needs two controllers, not a rack of them. - **No central unit is required.** Each DLA talks to the WebLock cloud on its own, over wired LAN, Wi-Fi, or NB-IoT mobile. The NB-IoT variant matters more than it sounds: an outdoor court gate at the far end of a site often has power but no realistic network path, and running fibre to it is a project. NB-IoT turns that into a non-project. - **It drives real locks.** Up to two lock drivers at 3 A / 12 V DC each, for solenoid or motor-driven locks, plus keypads or card readers over Wiegand or RS-232, plus inputs for door-status and tamper sensors. So the system knows not only that a door was unlocked, but whether it was actually opened — and whether it was left open. - **It keeps working when the internet does not.** A controller stores 25,000–50,000 codes and access rules locally and logs 100,000 events. If your uplink drops mid-evening, the gate still opens for the people who are supposed to be there, and the events sync when the connection returns. Traffic is AES256-encrypted. - **It has spare I/O.** Additional I/O pins are designed for integration with other equipment — lighting included. We will come back to that. ![WebLock DLA v4 system architecture: keypad, door sensors and electric lock connect to the DLA v4, which reaches the WebLock cloud over LAN, WiFi or NB-IoT](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/weblock-dla-v4-architecture.png) _How the pieces fit together. Diagram: WebLock._ Three variants exist — DLA v4 Pro Ethernet (`EL.DLA42001`), DLA v4 Pro NB-IoT (`EL.DLA42003`), and a single-entryway Consumer model (`EL.DLA42005`) — which mostly comes down to how the controller gets online and whether you are driving motor-driven locks. Your installer will pick; the SportyPlus side is identical either way. Two Estonian clubs on our platform have been running this arrangement long enough to be worth naming. **Airok** cut front-desk staffing substantially once smart locks and automated booking were doing the admitting. **Sport Club Viimsi** pairs automated entry with adaptive lighting and reports lower energy costs alongside the reduced staffing. ## Shelly: the switching side Lighting is a different problem from access. A door lock is a low-current device you drive directly. Court floodlighting is a mains circuit, often three-phase, often several kilowatts per court. You do not switch that from a booking system directly — you switch a relay, and the relay switches the contactor that feeds the lighting circuit. That relay is [Shelly](https://www.shelly.com/). ![Shelly Pro 4PM, a four-channel DIN rail smart relay with power metering](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/shelly-pro-4pm.jpg) _Shelly Pro 4PM — four independently switched channels on a DIN rail. Image: Shelly._ Shelly makes Wi-Fi and LAN-connected relays that mount on a DIN rail in the same distribution board as everything else in your plant room, which is exactly where a club's lighting control belongs. The obvious fit for a multi-court facility is the **Shelly Pro 4PM**: four channels, up to 16 A each, with power metering on every channel, controlled individually. One unit, four courts. Smaller sites use a one- or two-channel Pro device; a large facility stacks several. SportyPlus connects to **Shelly Cloud**, so: - You authorise SportyPlus against your Shelly account once, from the club admin, using Shelly's own sign-in. We never hold your Shelly password, and you can revoke the connection from Shelly at any time. - You then map devices to courts — this channel is court 2's lighting, that one is court 3's. That mapping is the only configuration the club does. - From then on, bookings drive the relays. Lights on at the start, off at the end. The per-channel power metering is a bonus most clubs do not expect to care about and then do. Because every channel reports its own consumption, you can see what each court's lighting actually costs per hour — and set the price of a floodlit slot from a number rather than a guess. Which brings up the commercial side. In SportyPlus, lighting can be an **additional booking product**: the member books an evening slot, lighting is added to the booking, and the charge lands on the same payment as the court. Clubs that used to absorb evening lighting as an overhead can recover it per booking instead, without anyone tallying anything. And a club administrator can always extend a lighting period manually — a match that runs long does not end in the dark. ### Either system can do either job It is worth being clear that the split above — WebLock for doors, Shelly for lights — is how clubs usually end up, not a rule either product imposes. A WebLock DLA v4 has spare I/O pins intended for exactly this, so the controller you fitted at the gate can switch a lighting contactor as well. And a Shelly relay does not care what it is switching: wire it to an electric strike or a gate opener instead of a lighting circuit and it opens doors. SportyPlus drives both, for both jobs, from the same booking. So it is largely a matter of preference — and of what your building makes convenient. Two things usually settle it: - **Where the cable runs.** If the lighting distribution board is a long way from the gate, you want a device at each, rather than pulling a new run across the site. If they are in the same plant room, one device may cover both. - **What each one gives you beyond switching.** WebLock's value is the credential layer — keypads and card readers, per-user access rules, door and tamper sensors, and a local event log — which a plain relay does not have. Shelly's is per-channel power metering and DIN-rail mounting, which a door controller does not have. If you want entry logged against people, put access on WebLock; if you want to know what each court's lighting costs, put lighting on Shelly. Plenty of clubs run only one of the two. Whichever way you go, the behaviour in the app is identical. ## Tweener: the light itself Access control and relays assume something worth switching on. For clubs that are installing or replacing court lighting, we have partnered with **[Tweener](https://www.tweener.fr/en/)**, the French LED lighting system made by NLX — and Tweener installations work with both the WebLock and Shelly control paths described above. ![Clay court at Finca Guila Tenis & Padel Club, Alicante, lit by Tweener LED strips mounted on the fence posts](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/tweener-finca-guila-alicante.jpg) _Finca Guila Tenis & Padel Club, Alicante. The light source is the strip along the fence line — there are no masts._ Tweener's idea is a linear, **post-less** system. Instead of four to eight floodlight masts around the court, LED bars mount directly onto the existing fence posts, running along the court's sides. That single decision removes most of what makes court lighting a construction project: no mast foundations, no crane, no long civil works, and in France no prior building permit. It is also why it goes into sites where masts were never going to be allowed — the Monte Carlo Country Club, the Mouratoglou Academy, Tennis Club Alberto Bonacossa in Milan, and the Nice LTC for the 2023 Hopman Cup. The numbers, for a single-court system: 300 lux average, uniformity coefficient ≥ 0.7, 5000 K, CRI above 70, at 1800 W of LED and 2200 W of electrical draw. The double system lights two courts at once at 250 lux from 3500 W of LED. Strips are IP65 and IK08 rated — sealed against weather and built to take a ball — with an operating range of −30 °C to +35 °C, in green (RAL 6005) or black (RAL 9005). Certification covers CE/RoHS in Europe and C-UL-US in the States, and the systems comply with federation standards including the French Tennis Federation's. The lens technology is patented in both France and the US. ![Players on floodlit courts at Pelican Golf Club, Belleair, Florida, at dusk](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/tweener-pelican-golf-club.jpg) _Pelican Golf Club, Belleair, Florida. Fence-mounted strips, no glare from overhead masts._ Two practical points matter more to a club manager than the photometrics. The first is that low, linear, side-mounted light is markedly kinder to players than high floodlights — you are not looking into a point source when you hit an overhead. The second is efficiency: at roughly 130 lm/W, an hour of Tweener-lit tennis costs a fraction of what the metal-halide system it replaces did. Combine that with lighting that only runs during actual bookings, and the two savings multiply rather than add. ![Aerial view of two floodlit clay courts at Ry Tennis Club, Denmark](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/tweener-ry-tennis-club-denmark.jpg) _Ry Tennis Club, Denmark. Light on the courts, not in the sky above them._ ## A real club: Padel Tinjan Padel Tinjan is a padel club in Tinjan, in the Istrian hinterland, and it runs on SportyPlus. It is a useful example precisely because it is not a flagship site — it is a small club that needs to be open to its members without paying somebody to sit at the entrance. ![The SportyPlus member app at Padel Tinjan, showing the Access Control card with a single Vrata button](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/access-control-lighting/sportyplus-access-control-app-padel-tinjan.jpg) _The member's home screen at Padel Tinjan. Access Control sits directly under the booking and club functions._ What is worth noticing is how little there is to it. On the member's home screen, under the same tiles they use to reserve a court, check results and read club messages, there is an **Access Control** card: _"Press the appropriate button to activate the lock or the lights."_ Below it, one button — **Vrata**, Croatian for _door_. That is the entire member-facing interface. No separate app to install, no code to look up, no instructions to remember. The card lists the controls the club has configured, so a club with a gate and two lit courts shows three buttons instead of one, in the member's own language. Everything described in this guide sits behind that button. The club's controller and relay are wired once by an electrician, mapped to courts once in the admin panel, and after that the member's experience is a card on the screen they were already looking at. ## What this looks like on a Tuesday Concretely, for a member with a 20:00 booking on court 3: 1. They book on their phone, and pay. Lighting is added to the booking automatically because it is an evening slot in October. 2. At 20:00, SportyPlus tells Shelly Cloud to close the channel mapped to court 3. The contactor pulls in, and court 3's Tweener strips come on. 3. The member arrives, types their usual PIN on the gate keypad. WebLock checks it against their active bookings, finds the 20:00 on court 3, and releases the lock. The door sensor confirms it actually opened. 4. At 21:30 the booking ends and the channel opens. Court 3 goes dark. Courts 1, 2 and 4 were never on. 5. Nobody was at the club. The evening's entries and each court's lighting consumption are in the admin panel in the morning. That is the whole point. The club is open to its members at 06:30 and at 22:00 without anyone being paid to be there, and the electricity bill reflects the hours that were actually played. ## Practical recommendations - **Start with the booking system, not the hardware.** Booking-driven access only works if bookings are accurate. If half your court time is still arranged in a WhatsApp group, fix that first — see [managing court bookings](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/court-booking-management). - **Count entryways, not doors.** Each DLA v4 covers two. Decide which gates genuinely need controlled access before you price anything. - **Check the network at the gate before you specify the controller.** If there is no realistic cable route, specify the NB-IoT variant now rather than discovering the problem on installation day. - **Put the lighting relay in the distribution board, not near the court.** A DIN-rail Shelly next to the contactors is serviceable by any electrician; a device in a weatherproof box at the fence line is not. - **Meter per court.** Per-channel metering is what lets you price a floodlit slot honestly. It costs nothing extra on a Pro 4PM. - **Keep one manual override.** A physical way to force lights on, and a way for a member of staff to open a door, for the evening the internet is down and someone is standing outside in the rain. - **Run the court cabling once.** If you are trenching for lighting or an access controller anyway, pull the network run for a [court camera](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/record-matches-on-club-courts) at the same time — the cabling is the slow part of that project too. - **Do lighting replacement and control together.** If you are re-lighting courts anyway, specifying the switching at the same time saves a second visit from the electrician. ## Related questions **Does each booking generate a new PIN code?** No. Each member has one permanent PIN. The system grants or refuses it based on that member's active bookings, so the code a member memorises in January still works in December — but only during their own booked times. **What happens if the internet goes down?** The WebLock DLA v4 stores codes and access rules locally — tens of thousands of them — and keeps logging events, so entry continues to work for existing bookings and the records sync when the connection returns. Lighting control runs through Shelly Cloud and does need connectivity, which is the main reason to keep a manual override at the board. **Can members bring guests in?** Yes, if the club allows it. A guest is admitted under the member's booking; the club decides in SportyPlus whether guest bookings are permitted and what they cost. **Do we have to replace our locks?** Usually not. The DLA v4 drives standard electric solenoid and motor-driven locks and reads standard Wiegand or RS-232 keypads and card readers, so an existing electrified door is often a matter of wiring rather than replacement. An entirely mechanical door does need a lock fitted. **Can we control lights without a smart lock system, or vice versa?** Yes — they are independent. Plenty of clubs automate lighting with a Shelly relay while keeping a staffed entrance, and plenty automate access on a facility whose lighting is already on a timer. Doing both is simply where the staffing saving becomes real. **Can Shelly do access control, or WebLock do lighting?** Yes, both ways. A Shelly relay wired to an electric strike or gate opener releases a door, and a WebLock DLA v4 has spare I/O pins for switching a lighting contactor. Which you pick is mostly a matter of preference and cable runs. The difference is in the extras: WebLock adds keypads, card readers, per-user rules and an event log; Shelly adds per-channel power metering. **Do we have to buy lighting from Tweener to use this?** No. SportyPlus switches whatever lighting circuit your electrician wires to the relay, regardless of manufacturer. Tweener is who we recommend and work with for clubs that are installing or replacing lighting, and their systems are supported by both control paths described here. **Is this only for tennis?** No. Nothing above is sport-specific — the same access and lighting automation runs on padel courts, pickleball courts, squash courts and indoor halls. Padel and pickleball facilities tend to adopt it fastest, because they are frequently built as unstaffed sites from day one. ## Related SportyPlus guides - [How to Manage Court Bookings Without Spreadsheets, Messages and Manual Work](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/court-booking-management) — the booking layer everything here depends on. - [Five signs your club needs online court booking](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/five-signs-your-club-needs-online-court-booking) — whether your manual processes have outgrown themselves. --- **Let the booking open the gate.** SportyPlus connects [court booking](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/court_booking), [memberships](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/memberships) and payments to [smart locks and lighting](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/smart_locks), so a paid booking becomes a working PIN code and a lit court — with no one on site to make it happen. ## Поврзани водичи на SportyPlus - [How to Manage Court Bookings Without Spreadsheets, Messages and Manual Work](https://www.sporty.plus/mk/blog/court-booking-management) A complete guide to replacing spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and manual scheduling with booking rules the system enforces on its own. - [How to Record Matches on Club Courts Automatically](https://www.sporty.plus/mk/blog/record-matches-on-club-courts) A camera on the court is easy. Getting the right 90 minutes of it onto the right player's phone is the hard part — and that is the part the booking system should be doing. - [Five signs your club needs online court booking](https://www.sporty.plus/mk/blog/five-signs-your-club-needs-online-court-booking) Five warning signs that phone-and-notebook court booking is costing your club time and money.