Have changed the button colours to be more subtle and added annotations (courtesy of a borrowed dymo label printer):

added magnets to the base board:

and decided that i need a dock for the gate....

ive not managed to think of a stable way to permanently fix the gate onto the base, so ill make a slot that it will fit in, to this end ive added a plug to the gate and wired it up, thus finishing that part of the build: