A Touch Control Panel for Your Church with an Inexpensive Android Tablet

Touch panels, without the custom programming

In big venues, a wall-mounted touch panel that runs the room is usually part of a custom-programmed control system. That’s real engineering, and for a large building it’s worth it.

For most churches, though, the need is simpler: a screen with a few big buttons that a volunteer, a pastor, or the person who unlocks the building can use. With Bitfocus Companion, an ordinary Android tablet can do that.

What you can put on the tablet

• Booth panel: “Start Service,” “Pastor Wide,” “Lyrics On,” “End Service.”
• Camera panel for the camera seat: one button per preset, with the shot’s name.
• Room panel by the door: “Projectors On,” “Projectors Off,” “Lobby TVs On.”
• Stage panel for the worship leader: “Start Countdown,” “Next Song.”

Each panel is just a different page of buttons in Companion.

Setting it up

1. Set up Companion on a computer at church and connect your gear. (See the OBS and vMix guides.)
2. Connect the tablet to the same network as Companion: the staff or AV network, not the guest Wi-Fi.
3. Open Companion’s web buttons page in the tablet’s browser. Companion shows the address in its launcher; it usually looks like http://192.168.1.20:8000/tablet.
4. Choose which page to show, and fewer columns for bigger buttons.
5. Add it to the home screen so it opens full screen like an app.
6. Keep the screen on and the tablet charging. A wall mount with a charging cable, or a desk stand, works well.

Tips for a reliable panel

• Give Companion’s computer a fixed IP address, so the tablet’s bookmark never breaks.
• Make dangerous buttons hard to hit by accident. Put “End Stream” in a corner, a different color, or on a second page.
• Use button colors and feedback, so the panel shows what’s live, not just what you pressed.
• Label in plain words. (See designing Companion pages for volunteers.)
• Keep a printed fallback in the binder: what each button does, and how to do it by hand.

Where WorshipMetrics helps

The same Companion buttons can appear inside WorshipMetrics Present, in its Companion tab. Tech Manager finds Companion on the church network automatically, and in the web app it works in Chrome and Edge on the church network once you allow local network access. Slides can press Companion buttons on their own, too. (See Companion buttons inside WorshipMetrics.)

Record the tablet, Companion’s computer, and their addresses in the Signal Map, so the next volunteer knows where everything is.