Introducing the cueSystem — small-venue cue lights done properly

If you've stage-managed in a small to mid-size venue you'll have run into the cue-lights problem. The good systems — Stage Research, ETC Net3, a couple of broadcast-grade options — are designed for rooms that fly more than three battens and have a dedicated lighting tech who knows what subnet means. The cheap end is "two LEDs in series with a doorbell push and a six-core cable down the wall". Almost nobody serves the middle: the upstairs blackbox, the school theatre, the community pantomime, the off-West-End fringe.

That's where the cueSystem lives.

What it is

Two pieces of hardware and a browser:

• cueServer — a small Ethernet-only box that runs the show. Drop it onto your venue's network and it serves a web operator UI to every device on the LAN. The stage manager's laptop, the FOH operator's iPad, the LX's phone, the wireless tablet at the SM desk — they all see the same state of the show at the same moment.
• cueDesk — a six-channel hardware desk for the SM. Two LEDs per channel (red / green), three buttons per channel (Stand By / Go / Clear), three masters for the whole rig (All Stand By / All Go / All Clear). No screen, no menus, no submenus you have to navigate to in the middle of a fast cue. Steel chassis, mechanical buttons rated for ten million presses.

The two pair over the LAN with zero configuration — the desk discovers the server by mDNS the moment it sees a cueserver.local on the network. If your venue has no infrastructure at all you can plug the pair into a £15 unmanaged switch and the cueServer hands out DHCP to itself and the desk and any laptop you also plug in. That's it, you're calling cues.

What we set out to fix

Three things were broken in the small-venue space:

1. Sync. Most existing systems do single-station-master — one operator presses Go, the others are passive indicators. We wanted any device to be authoritative: SM calls Stand By, the operator at the relevant station acknowledges (moving the channel to Ready), SM presses Go. Every screen in the building reflects every state change within ~30 ms, real-time over WebSocket.
2. Hardware where it matters. A browser-only UI is fine for the stations — actors and ops tend to have a phone in their pocket — but it's the wrong tool for the SM, who needs to find Go without taking their eyes off the script. The cueDesk gives them a tactile six-channel layout that's identical every show. Muscle memory is the point.
3. No cloud, no account, no internet. Theatre venues' networks are notoriously sketchy. The cueSystem runs entirely on-LAN: no phone-home, no captive portal nonsense, no "your subscription has lapsed" mid-tech. It boots, it serves, you call the show.

The bits that took the longest

We spent more time on the lost-link state than on anything else. A cue lights system that can fail invisibly is worse than no cue lights — at least with no cue lights nobody's expecting a Go they aren't going to get. So if the cueDesk loses contact with the cueServer, every channel on it slow-flashes red+green, every button press is ignored, and the status indicator pulses red. It's the loudest possible "do not trust this right now" — and the moment the link recovers, channels resume from the last known state. They don't reset.

We also went round and round on the Held state. When you fire All Go but one station hasn't acknowledged in time, what should happen? Fire all the ready channels and skip the unready one, or refuse to fire any of them? We landed on "fire the ready ones, mark the laggard as Held". Skipping just the late station preserves the SM's intent — the show goes on — but the Held flag (green slow-flash) tells them which station to follow up with after the fact.

What it costs

Pre-orders are open now — your card is charged on order to lock in the price and reserve a unit from the first production run. If the estimated dispatch date slips you can wait or cancel for a full refund (see Terms section 7). Free UK shipping on the bundle for the duration of the pre-order window.

The Q2 2026 window is real: the production design is locked, the prototype boards are in our hands, and we're working through a small-batch run with our usual UK assembler. We'll keep this blog updated as that progresses; in the meantime if you want pre-launch updates, sign up on the homepage Coming-soon card.

What's next

The cueDesk does six channels, which fits 90% of the venues we built it for. The other 10% are bigger rooms — schools with separate fly and trap operators, larger community theatres, rep venues that run two shows in tech the same week. We're planning a cueController outstation — a small button-and-LED unit that lives at a single station and pairs over the same protocol — so an SM can extend the system to as many cue points as the venue needs without duplicating the desk. Roadmap, not pre-order; we'll talk about it when there's something concrete to show.

In the meantime — if you've been frustrated by the gap between "two LEDs on a doorbell" and "system that needs a degree to configure", we built the cueSystem for you. Bug us on support@expanseelectronics.com with questions.