Description
What it is
A small stick, about the size of a memory stick. USB plug at one end, three little screws at the other, each one labelled so you can see at a glance which wire goes where. They take the same wires your boards already use to talk to each other.
Both ends on, and your PC has joined the layout. There is nothing to set up, nothing to choose and nothing to guess at — it comes ready for System 2, at the right speed, with the right end fitting. A light on the stick tells you it is awake and another blinks as your boards chatter.
Why it makes life easier
Today, changing a board means finding it. Under the baseboard, behind the backscene, up the far end. You look up its address, you type it in, you hope you got the right one.
With the adaptor in, none of that happens. Because your PC is now on the same wires as the boards, MegaConsole can simply ask them all at once, and they all answer. So your layout draws itself: every board, what kind it is, what you called it, what software it is running and whether there is a newer one waiting. You never tell it a thing.
After that it is all one screen and one press. Click a board and its own page opens. Change a setting and it goes straight down the wire. Press once and every board on the layout is saved onto your PC. It is the difference between an afternoon on your back with a torch and five minutes with a cup of tea.
What you can only do with the adaptor plugged in
Seeing your layout
- Find every board you own, all by itself — nothing to type in
- Show what each board is, what it is called and where it is
- Show which boards have newer software waiting
- Open a board’s own page with one click
- Watch your boards talking to each other, as it happens
- Tell you when something is wrong, in plain words
Changing your boards
- Change any board’s settings without leaving your chair
- Move a servo and watch it move, before you save anything
- Save every board’s settings onto your PC in one press
- Put saved settings back on a board
- Copy one board’s settings onto a new board of the same kind
- Give every board your WiFi name and password in one go
- Take your WiFi back off a board again
New software onto your boards
- Update your boards over your own WiFi
- Send one board first, to prove it worked, before the rest follow
That is fifteen things your PC cannot do on its own. The one people are most pleased about is the WiFi: give MegaConsole your WiFi name and password once, press the button, and every board on the layout has it. No board-by-board setup pages, no typing the same password fourteen times.
What you need
- A Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC
- MegaConsole, our free program — the adaptor does nothing on its own, and MegaConsole cannot see your boards without it
- A free USB socket, and the two wires that already run between your boards
No driver disc, no power supply, no soldering.
This or the Programmer?
They do different jobs and most people start here. The adaptor is the everyday one — it is how you look after the whole layout from your chair. The System2 Programmer is the just-in-case one: a lead that works on one board on its own, for putting software on by hand or finishing an update that was stopped half way. You do not need both, and you can add the other whenever you like.
There is a full side-by-side list of what each one switches on on the MegaConsole page.
