I finished up the latest version of the acrylic tab/slot version and promptly set about manually wiring up my control panel for it.  Looks good right?

Several hours later I realized how much this sucks.  There is absolutely zero chance anyone not in a third world country who desperately needs this, and has no other choice, would do this for 1000 units.  This issue could be fixed with a suitably large PCB I could through-hole, but that also sucks.

I promptly put that idea on the back burner and decided to stick our other display (Pi touchscreen) directly on the unit.

It still uses the serial protocol @Steven.Carr  came up with to interface between the critical code running on the 'core' and the Pi.  This means we could still split the two and use some wireless protocol instead... or run it on a tablet, or have it go away altogether and the core will just keep truckin..

This also led to the discovery that wiring this thing up and *then* assembling it also sucks hard core.

I am in the process of redesigning the front/back panels so they can be now removed without having to split the case.  This will translate to the ability to assemble the entire unit, plug stuff in, and then put the front/back on as the last step.  That is going to waste some material, but it will save a whole buttload of time.  Everything goes together pretty quickly, right up until you start getting wires caught in the tabs and such.

The time lost is far more valuable than the material in this case.  Doing it.