Running the show from a Stream Deck
A mouse is a bad instrument for a live broadcast. The keys you want are the same six every race: cut to the leader, cut to the battle, tower on, replay, GO, and the wipe. A Stream Deck gives you those under your fingers, and it finds PONNE by itself — there is no pairing step and nothing to type.
Install the plugin
The plugin ships inside PONNE Broadcast, in tools/streamdeck/ next to the app. Double-click com.ponne.broadcast.streamDeckPlugin and the Stream Deck software installs it. A PONNE category appears in the actions list.
Drag any PONNE action onto a key. It works immediately — the plugin talks to the app over its own local control port and discovers it on its own.
The rule that gives the deck its shape
A key STAGES. GO cuts.
Every action except the …Now ones puts something in the NEXT bus and lights the key amber. Nothing viewers see changes until you press GO. That is deliberate and it is the whole reason a deck is safe to hand to somebody who is not the director: a mis-hit is a staged thing you can clear, not a cut on air.
If you genuinely want a key that goes straight to air, use the …Now variant of the action. Give it a colour you will recognise, and put it somewhere your palm does not rest.
A layout that works
A first deck that a caster-plus-director pair can actually run:
| Key | Action | Why there |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cut to leader | the shot you return to |
| 2 | Cut to battle | the shot worth having |
| 3 | Timing tower | the graphic that is up the most |
| 4 | Lower third | the one that needs timing |
| 5 | Replay last moment | the thing you want within two seconds |
| 6 | GO | big, bottom right, under the thumb |
| 7 | Stinger | the wipe |
| 8 | Clean feed | the panic key: everything off |
Put GO and Clean feed far apart. They are the two keys you will hit without looking, and they are opposites.
Holding a key
A hold on a staging key cuts it immediately, without GO. It is there for the moment you are already behind — a battle that starts while you are staging something else — and it takes long enough that you cannot do it by accident.
Key faces
The keys draw themselves: a staged key goes amber, a live one goes red, and the tower key shows whether the tower is up. You do not need to remember what state the show is in, which is the point — the deck is a mirror of the console, not a set of buttons that hope.
Common snags
The keys are grey and nothing happens. PONNE Broadcast is not running, or it is running as a different user. The plugin discovers the app on this machine only; a console on another PC uses the crew link in a browser instead.
A key works and GO does nothing. GO is the only action that changes what viewers see, and it does nothing when nothing is staged — that is correct. The console's NEXT row shows what is waiting.
Two decks, one show. Fine, and quite common: one for the director, one for the replay operator. They stage into the same bus, so agree who presses GO before the race rather than during it.
The plugin vanished after an update. The Stream Deck software occasionally disables a plugin it did not install itself. Re-run the .streamDeckPlugin file; your key layout survives.
If you have no deck
Everything here has a keyboard shortcut in the console, and the console works in any browser on the network — a spare laptop beside the rig is a perfectly good second seat. The deck is a nicer instrument, not a required one.