I'm setting up my first RK1-8 and need some advice on how to lay out the buttons...

We are putting it in our conference room and will basically have it next to a podium to drop down a projector and screen and lower the lights for people to give presentations. The catch is that we're going to start renting out our conference room, so I have to set it up in a way that needs absolutely ZERO training for an end-user to figure out. Here is what I was thinking, let me know your thoughts...

PC Power Off
Scene1 Scene2
Mute
Vol - Vol +


I don't like the "Scene 1" and "Scene 2" buttons as they won't make sense. I'm thinking about using Lights On and Lights Off, but I'd rather have a low-light and a not quite full bright scene, so I'm not sure those labels are appropriate either. I might just use the labels but map a low-light scene to the Lights Off button and a high-brightness scene to the Lights On. Part of me wants to use a Lights button (jumps to a Lights page) and then use the Up and Down buttons to ramp the lighting... but that's too confusing IMO. Maybe have "Lights Off" toggle between a low-light scene and an All Off scene.

The room has a RadioRa wall master control, so as they enter the room they will be able to pick a scene from there. When at the podium, they will hook up their laptop and press "PC." I'd like them to be able to hit either Power Off to pull the screen & projector back up and also raise the lighting, but I want the lighting control on the keypad so they can leave the projector on but bring the lights back up from the podium.

This room also has access to a full rack of AV gear so theoretically they COULD pull up DirecTV and view it. I toyed with the idea of putting a SAT button on there, but there aren't enough buttons to do anything with on the RK1-8. I have an Elan Via on the other side of the room, but I doubt anyone coming in to give a meeting will ever need (or want) to touch it for anything. I may throw a T1 in the room if for some reason they need to show some TV programming for a meeting...

Sorry for rambling. Too much caffeine and too many options here...

As always, I appreciate all the real world advice!

thanks

for what it's worth, I set mine up:

S1 S2
S3 S4
S5 vol+
Off vol-

I have different colors for the sources, different colors for the Volume, and a third color for Off.

For the screen, how about a screen button that just toggles the screen up and down. That's pretty intuitive

Be advised that the colorometry on the RK1-8 isn't very good, some buttons will look different

Thanks for the input

We have a drop down screen AND a projector lift... I can't see giving them their own buttons unless it's just a "power on" macro that drops them and an "off" that pulls them back up. Do you agree?

I love the flexibility of these keypads, but now that I'm setting one up I feel like there are a 1,000 different ways I could do it!

Now that I reread your post a little more cerafully, why not do a RK3?

Because I already have an RK1. :)

Would a press and hold function work for the extreme commands (all off & bright)?
Then your two buttons could perform 4 functions.

Yeah it would.

I'm just questioning whether it would be intuitive enough for someone walking in off the street to use our conference room.

I wish there were a few more labels I could choose from like lights up and lights down. Then I would do press & hold to brighten/dim, but a single press would jump to a high/low light scene.

Can you confirm if the RK-1 can learn an IR command?

The RK-1 can't learn anything, you have to learn IR into the Integration Designer software through an IR-PRO module.

The RK-1 (with a processor) can issue any commands that any other in-wall or handheld remote can, including rs232, conditional with power sensing, system macros, etc

this is how I typically program mine (similar to Clint's demo)

S1 S2
S3 S3
CHup VOLup
CHdown VOLdown


Sources 1-4 have separate colors. When one of the sources is pressed it turns the system on and changes the CH and VOL button's color to match the active source, for active source confirmation..
When a source button is pressed and held for more then 3 secs in turns the system off.