Show control at City of Good Forum & State of Play 2026
Forty-five custom button boxes, one tap each to fire a lighting and AV scene over Wi-Fi - the show control behind NVPC's City of Good Forum and State of Play 2026.
By FrontHAUS Team · Editorial
On 31 March we ran the tech behind NVPC's City of Good Forum and State of Play 2026, an event attended by Minister of State Dinesh Vasu Dash, who holds office across the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and the Ministry of Manpower.
What we're showing here is the part guests never see but always feel: show control. The exhibition hall was lined with illuminated display pillars, one per charity and community organisation. We wanted the room to change on cue, with lighting and AV scenes shifting instead of a technician hunched over a laptop firing each one by hand.
So we built our own custom button boxes. Each one is a plain, sturdy panel of physical buttons, and a press fires a scene through Bitfocus Companion over Wi-Fi. The boxes run on battery, so there are no cables at all - no power runs, no data snaking across a busy floor, just a tap. We put 45 buttons out across the event, so the team could trigger the right look at the right moment from wherever they were standing.
Why build the hardware ourselves instead of buying a generic controller? Because a real event floor is unforgiving. The buttons have to be obvious under pressure, reliable over a venue network that's also carrying everyone's phones, and laid out for this show, not a one-size-fits-all grid. Building them in-house means we shape the boxes around how the run-of-show actually works, and fix or change anything on the day.
It's not the flashiest thing we make, but it's a good example of how we work. The moments an audience remembers usually sit on top of quiet, dependable engineering they'll never notice. Getting that part right is most of the job.