A television master control room (MCR) is the nerve centre of any broadcast network. It is the first and last point of any content that eventually gets compressed and distributed to home viewers over a range of mediums (terrestrial, satellite and streaming).

Within such a space, there are numerous independent systems (routing, switching, scopes, processors, compliance recorders) running to keep the operation going as smoothly as possible. Some of which are automated but all requiring manual intervention when it comes to alerting the operators on shift of any technical issues that may arise.

This project came out of a need to allow a quick way to shut some of the many machines up when a situation arises as there are often multiple systems going off due to their locations within the broadcast chain.

Having come out of a funk with my ambitious Dumbwatch V1 project I needed an easy project to get back on the Maker horse. With my experience from the uMacro and discovering the genuine DFRobot beetle board, this turned out to be what I needed. The switch logic was a challenge as I hadn't dealt with saving button states before nor latching interfaces.