MegaConsole

Yes. Free to download, free to keep, nothing to subscribe to and no trial that runs out. The only things we sell for it are the two small parts further up this page, and you can add either one whenever you like.

Every System 2 board we make — the servo, solenoid and stall‑motor drivers, the Panel Controller and its expanders, OUT‑64, Relay‑8, ROUTE, the DCC decoder, AutoSignal, the RFID readers and the rest. They all turn up in the same list, whichever ones you own.

Our older Classic boards — MultiPanel, MiniPanel and the original controllers — are set up on the board itself and are not part of MegaConsole.

Straight away. The day we finish a new version, MegaConsole has it and offers it to you.

If you do not use MegaConsole your boards are offered the same version on the 1st of the following month, together with anything else that has become ready. That is on purpose: it means updates arrive on one day you can expect rather than on four random evenings, which is what people told us was wearing.

The version you are offered first is the finished one, not a test build — it is exactly what everyone else gets a few weeks later. And if we find a problem with it in the meantime, we simply do not pass it on until it is fixed.

No. If you can install a program and click a button, you can run MegaConsole. It finds your boards for you, tells you in plain words when something wants doing, and always shows you what it is about to do before it does it.

The user guide is arranged by the job you are trying to get done rather than by what the buttons are called, so you can go straight to the bit you need.

Yes, and it is worth doing. Download it, open it, and it will go and fetch the newest software for every board we make and keep it on your PC. Every page explains itself in plain words as you go, so you can read your way round the whole thing before you buy anything.

Your own boards start appearing in the list once MegaConsole has a way of hearing them — which is what the next question is about.

Not necessarily. MegaConsole Hardware Options above sets out exactly what each way in gives you. MegaConsole includes its own MQTT broker and can set up all or selected System2 boards to use it. That costs nothing at all, and an existing broker still works.

Otherwise the CAN Adaptor is the one to start with: a small stick, USB into your PC, two wires onto the layout, and your boards turn up on their own.

No — MegaConsole drives our own CAN Adaptor, and your order for it is what switches that part of the program on. Without one, the pages that use it stay greyed and say “No supported device found”.

The reason is a practical one. There are dozens of USB CAN sticks about and they all behave a little differently — different drivers, different speeds, different ways of passing the messages along. Rather than half‑support a shelf full of them, we picked one, set it up so there is nothing for you to install on Windows 10 or 11, and we test every release of MegaConsole against it. It works when you plug it in, and on the day it does not, we know exactly what you are holding.

Everything MegaConsole does without an adaptor at all is still yours: finding boards that are on your network, changing them, backing them up, collecting firmware and updating over WiFi.

Same answer, and for the same reason: it is our own System2 Programmer that MegaConsole is set up for, and your order for it is what switches that part on. Home‑made and other leads may well do the same job electrically, but we cannot test them all, so MegaConsole is not expecting them.

This lead is only ever wanted for one job — finishing an update that got stopped part way through — and that is exactly the moment you want no doubt at all about the thing in your hand. Ours is a plain lead that clips onto the board’s six‑way header, it is tested against every release, and it is priced to sit in a drawer until the day you want it.

Nearly always the email address. Your order and your licence find each other by it, so an order placed under one address and a MegaConsole registered under another never meet. The address this PC is registered to is printed on the page itself, so you can check it against your order without leaving the program.

If you have only just ordered, give it a day — it switches itself on with nothing for you to do. If it still looks wrong after that, tell us and we will put it right.

There is one other cause, and it only applies to the Programmer lead on a Windows 11 PC. Windows 11 does not come with the driver that lead needs, so until it is installed the lead is invisible and those pages stay grey however healthy your board is. It takes a couple of minutes, you only do it once, and section 15.4 of the user guide shows you how.

To find them and change their settings with the CAN Adaptor, no. To hand them new software over your own network, yes — and MegaConsole is what puts them on it.

You type your network name and password once, on the WiFi page, and it passes them to every board on the layout. You never have to go round them one at a time, and you never have to remember it again.

So your licence can find you. Give your email the first time you open MegaConsole and the licence arrives on its own — there is no code to type in and nothing to keep safe. If you bought your boards from us it is issued the moment your order goes through.

It switches on the parts that change a board: its settings, and putting new software on it. Looking round your layout, downloading software and finishing an interrupted update never need it.

Yes. The internet is only wanted for fetching new software and for MegaConsole keeping itself up to date. Once files are on your PC they stay there.

A layout in a shed with no signal, or a club night with the router switched off, is no trouble at all — everything else carries on as normal.

No. MegaConsole copies a board’s settings onto your PC before it changes anything, every single time, without being asked. Every copy is kept with the date on it, so you can put any of them back later.

You can also copy the whole layout in one press, and put one board’s setup onto a new board of the same kind — handy if you ever swap one out.

Yes, and that is rather the point of it. You see the plan first — which boards, which version, and what changed in it — and nothing is sent until you say so.

One board always goes first and has to prove it worked before the rest follow, a few at a time. Any board that wants one more update the old way first is marked as such, so you are told rather than left guessing.

Nothing is broken. A board writes its new software in one go, so an interruption simply leaves it waiting for the rest of the job.

Plug the System2 Programmer into it and MegaConsole finishes it off: which board, which version, press the button. Your settings stay on the board, and if that gets interrupted too you just run it again.

Yes. MegaConsole keeps every version we have published, with the notes that came with each one, so stepping a board back is a matter of picking the one you want.

That job goes through the Programmer lead rather than over your network.

What your layout does, no — never. Your track plan, your routes, your signalling and everything you have set up stay on your own PC and your own boards, whatever you set. Your WiFi password goes nowhere but to your own boards.

Two things can come to us if you leave them switched on, and MegaConsole asks you about both on its first run. One is a health report about your boards — free memory, how long each has been running, and anything that went wrong while it was updating itself — sent with your name and registered address so your boards show up as yours. The other is a second copy of your board settings, so a lost or failed PC does not take them with it. Both start on, both are one click off, and the second is answered separately from the first, so you can have one and refuse the other.

A fourth switch asks whether MegaConsole may tell us how the program itself is being used. That one starts off and only goes on if you say so.

Worth knowing whichever way you set them: your boards have always sent us a health check‑in and a copy of their own settings by themselves, whether or not you run MegaConsole. Our privacy policy sets out every last bit of it.

Nothing is wrong. That is Windows being careful about software from a small publisher, and it is not a judgement on the file. You will see it twice: once as the installer comes down, and once as it opens.

What Windows will say, and what to click, in the Bits and pieces section above, has the exact wording and the button to press each time.

Yes. New versions arrive quietly in the background and go in the next time you start it, so you install it once and it looks after the rest from there.

You do not need an administrator password to put it on, and it takes itself off again from Settings > Apps if you ever want it gone.

Ask us. There is a full user guide with a picture of every page, and a Print this guide button if you would rather have it beside the layout on paper.

If that does not sort it, get in touch. We would far rather hear from you than have you fighting it, and at this stage of MegaConsole’s life being told what is not right is worth a great deal to us.