Don't touch anything - what does the top left panel do?

Of course, major spoilers for this answer. Excuse me if I leave the hints as-is and only spoiler-tag the solutions.

The panel can be divided into two parts of interest: The dials and the numbers.

First, the dials. As your correctly assume, they are spinning just like the clock. You probably noticed it on the biggest one, which comes round (with a green light) about once a minute. The smaller ones are smaller.

The goal, obviously, is to get all the clocks into the correct position. The dials are seconds, minutes and hours, from largest to smallest, and they are bound to your system clock. What you need to do is to find the correct time when they are all lit-up.

The correct time is midnight, 00:00:00.

At that precise moment, the machine will print out a piece of paper. This leaflet contains rows and columns of black and white dots. These dots are a code you need to enter somewhere.

If you read the rows of dots from the bottom to the top, each row should have between 1 and 3 dark dots. This sequence can be used with the roman numeral buttons you have already unlocked.

That's one part, the other is more complex. The D1, D7, Bsomething and something4 look like some coordinates. You can also notice a completely blank spot.

These will come into play later, when you have unlocked a 7x7 panel of tiny buttons. You will also need to find out the last coordinate, but you should hit it on your way to opening that panel. Afterwards, the coordinates translate directly onto the panel, and you will get a new item. What to do with it is yet another issue you will have to find out (no, I don't know, at least not yet).