System is the part of ARC that runs your whole business, not one room. It holds the bridges to your hardware, the gear that lives outside any single game — lobby lights, the open/closed sign, waiting-area music — the schedules that open and close your day, and the media files every game can share. Anything that belongs to your location as a whole lives here.
You reach it from the System item in ARC’s main navigation. On its own screen ARC calls this area Settings, with the subtitle “Configure hardware, settings, and appearance.”
System vs. the Game Editor
ARC has two places to set things up, and they serve different purposes. Knowing which is which saves a lot of hunting.
- System (this area) is business-wide. It is for things that aren’t tied to one room: the protocol bridges to your hardware, location-wide devices, open/close schedules, lobby effects, and the shared media library. System settings are always available, no matter which rooms are running.
- The Game Editor is per game. Open a game in the Editor and you configure everything that makes that one escape room work — its objectives, hints, displays, in-room props, panels, per-game automations and scenes, variables, and its own media.
Some features — Devices, Automations, Scenes, and Media — exist in both places. That is on purpose. A device in System is your lobby sign; a device in a game is the maglock on its final door. They look similar but belong to different scopes, so each has its own page in these guides.
A quick test
Ask: “Does this belong to one specific room?” If yes, it lives in that game’s Editor. If it belongs to your building as a whole — the lobby, the schedule, shared files, your team — it lives here in System.
What’s in System
| Section | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Connections | The protocol bridges between ARC and your hardware — MQTT, Z-Wave, DMX, Hue, a Raspberry Pi, and more. You add a connection once, and every device that uses it rides on top. See Connections. |
| Raspberry Pi and Windows Bridge | The field hardware that turns ordinary computers into ARC displays, GPIO controllers, and Bluetooth gateways. See Raspberry Pi and Windows Bridge. |
| Devices | Your location-wide gear — lobby lighting, signs, music, schedule-driven hardware. See System devices. |
| Automations and Scenes | Business-wide rules and sequences — open/close schedules, lobby lighting and music, signage, reactions to location-wide devices. See System automations and scenes. |
| Media | The shared media library — files available to every game. See Shared media. |
Connections come first
Most hardware in ARC starts with a connection. Before you can add a device — in System or in a game — ARC needs the protocol bridge that reaches it. If you’re setting up hardware for the first time, start at Connections.
Everything runs locally
ARC is local-first. Your connections, devices, automations, and media all live on the ARC host machine at your location — not in the cloud. A signal from a prop travels across your own local network to the host and back, with no remote round-trip in the middle. That keeps your rooms running even if the internet drops, and it makes the ARC host real operational infrastructure: keep it stable and on a dependable local network, and your whole setup stays dependable too.
Where to go next
- Connections — the protocol bridges, with a table of every connection type.
- Raspberry Pi and Windows Bridge — the multi-role Pi bridge and the Windows display kiosk.
- System devices — your location-wide hardware.
- System automations and scenes — business-wide rules and on-demand sequences.
- Shared media — files every game can use.