Control Panel Features

Control Panel Features

Control PanelsYou may have noticed that all of our products look the same.  There are in fact only 2 types of main front panel across some 30 products. Ok if you add the trimmer, preamp, talkback, meters and GPIO panels there are a few more, but it's amazing what you can do with 2 panels, a LCD, software and labelled switches!

These simple additions allow us to comprehensively control every product we make.


How it works

Each panel has a little processor on it, which controls all of the switches, LEDs and LCD.  These panel processors then communicate with a central panel processor, which tells the panels what to do, using a clever software language that we wrote.  So one switch can be momentary, one switch a toggle, another inactive.  This means that each panel can work quite differently from another seemingly identical panel.

This software allows us to build up a panel system for each product that works just right for that product, without having to redesign a panel system for each product.

Dedicated Panels

Most of our products have a set of similar functions: source selectors, function selectors and speaker controllers.  So we have designed universal panels to cope with each type of job - a selector panel, and a speaker control panel.  The software referred to above, sorts out all the rest, so each panel does it's job well.

To complement these, we've got some other dedicated panels: a trimmer level panel, a talkback panel, a GPIO panel and a VU meter panel.

Panel Facts

  • Each panel has the same height, and is based around a universal panel width system.  Our usual panels are 3 unit wide, the GPIO is 2 units wide and the talkback is 1 unit wide
  • The panels are shallow, only 20mm, or 1" deep
  • They work off 12V DC which is either supplied by a local power supply, or more usually via the 6w umbilical cord from the Brain rack
  • They can be mounted into a 4RU 19" wide frame, a movable wooden pod, or directly into studio furniture
  • The panels can be mounted in any order - you can just unplug them and re-position to suit your needs
  • The panels can be spaced apart, they don't need to be in line.
  • The expensive, real buttons are rated for 10 million pushes, so should last a lifetime.
  • The panel labels can be printed by you so you can relabel the buttons to suit you