Making a ship control panel

So I want to make a ship control panel. What I mean by this is a 3D game object with switches and levers and buttons etc. that you can hover with the mouse over and then either press them or move them (the levers).

Now my problem is that I don't know how I should go about this system so that is efficient and performs well. What I need is when a button is pressed for example it will send some data, maybe actually call a function to the main script and it will turn the engine on/off for example, or the lever will tell the ship at what speed to move etc.

So to recap I need a way to handle a lot of buttons and stuff (to be easy to implent more should I add) and a way for the buttons to "talk" with the main script.