Remote Delay Panel

WSBF's delay unit is mounted in a very unfortunate place.  For years DJ's have bumped every button on the device, sometimes in seemingly impossible combinations.  Countless times the bypass has been enabled or the delay has been turned off or dump has been pressed by accident.  Earlier this week someone managed to first navigate to the menu screen, select the audio input option, change the audio input to analog (which would have taken us off the air), and then enable the bypass.  Because the bypass was on no one noticed the problem until another DJ managed to bump the bypass, turning it off.  Figuring out the problem took a few minutes and caused a little bit of commotion.
To keep something like this from happening again, I intend to build a remote panel to operate the delay and then hide the actual unit from the DJs.  Moving the unti to a new location could remedy the problem, but would still make the device susceptible to tinkering DJs.  The dump panel will only make available the buttons necessary to the DJ.  Symetrix sells a remote panel compatible with the delay we use, but charges $300 for functionality available in about $20 worth of parts.  I also feel that the functionality their device provides is not satisfactory, as the device does not display the amount of time left on the delay.  The user guide for a similar unit (available here) show how easy it can be to build such a remote panel.  Serial communication with the device is also detailed pretty thoroughly and with a little more hardware and a microcontroller, adding the ability to see the time remaining in the delay should be fairly easy to implement.  I've begun research into the parts needed for the remote delay panel and will move forward in implementing a solution to this problem in the coming weeks.