A console capture system nowadays is (usually) a computerised means of  doing (one or more of) several important tasks: providing a combination control system that has a memory (usually several for the entire organ); detecting which stops and couplers are drawn or not; and (for organs that have any kind of electrical action) detecting  which keyboard notes are depressed.

    A contemporary computerised capture system can be an extremely powerful and very useful way of controlling any organ with electric or electro-pneumatic action, or that has electronic tone generation or a mixture of pipe and electronic.
    Depending upon how ranks are distributed between sound boards, great flexibility in splitting, transferring, and coupling departments and sub-departments can be incorporated simply by appropriate programming.  The keyboard order could be easily changed from English to Continental at the touch of stop, for example.

Contacts of keys, pistons, and stops are wired to opto-isolation boards, which feed the opto-input card of the main system.

Apart from providing several levels of memory for all pistons, and even a sequencer, the entire organ memory can be written to a magnetic card, which can be read very quickly indeed when inserted, thus allowing every organist to have the organ set up exactly as he or she wishes every time it is played.
    Recording performances on floppy disk, for example, also becomes possible, which is extremely useful for teaching.

    Mechanical action organs can benefit from a combination control and selection system, provided that there is an electromechanical means of activating ranks of pipes, and even connected drawstop action if it is important to preserve it.

áAnalogue Pin Board feeds the expression pedals etc to the main System.

    It is now possible to use more than one console to control one or more organs, and play various ones of them at the same time.

The system's Central Processor Card processes console information and passes it to the Console Output Card, which feeds the Console Driver Board, wired to stop solenoids etc.

    At present a link from a computerised console to tracker action that is capable of conveying the sensitivity of the movement of the pallets back to the keys (as in a complete tracker system) is possible, but extremely expensive.  For the moment they are probably only able to be considered as a luxury item for the average church.  But advanced technology continually increases  power, reliability, and value for money.

    A well engineered capture system can leave a detached console almost empty, with a very simple link to the main controller system within the heart of an organ.