How To Setup Lor Show To Run Every Night?

[Orville]

This is why I bought and use the DC-MP3 Showtime Director, it runs my Halloween show the entire month of October, I never have to touch it once everything is set up. Everything runs from a 512MB {up to 2GB} SD Card that holds all the files. I don't even have to worry about power failures, if power fails, the internal clock backup battery keeps the time and when power comes back up, if it's still during show time, show starts up and contiinues, and will still shut down at closing time.

My current Halloween set up goes like this:

Show 1 {Main light show}: start 7pm - end 9:59pm Sun-Thu / start 7pm - end 10:59pm Fri/Sat.

Show 2 {Ending Announcement - Shows over}: start 9:59pm - end 9:59pm Sun-Thu / start 10:59pm - end 10:59pm Fri/Sat {the announcement repeats twice}

Show 3: {Overnight Lights - no music, but use a BLANK 30 second MP3 file}: start 10pm - end 6:45am Sun-Thur / start 11pm - end 6:45am Fri/Sat.

Show 4: (turns off any stray overnight lights left on, also uses the BLANK 30 second MP3 file}: start: 6:45am - end 6:50am Sun-Sat

Show 5: {daytime music and announcements}: start 7am - end 6:50pm Sun-Sat

I use the hardware utility to set up the shows since I can set the time for any hour and any minute, unlike the SSB which limits you to hourly or 30 minute increments.

I also use an FM Transmitter and it stays on 24/7 during the show season.

Now the BLANK 30 second MP3 file is basically a music file that contains nothing but dead silence in it. Since the DC-MP3 Showtime Director can not do silent animation files, I had to create this "dummy file" to make the sequence think there is a song playing, this way the MP3 Director unit will run the sequence and run it silently while the overnight lights fade between all elements in my display.

Some folks say it's a waste of money to buy the DC-MP3 Showtime Director, but it has saved me a ton of grief and having to reset a timer if the power happened to fail and disrupt the timer, which I've had to do with some digital timers because they had no battery backup system built in, and even some that did. And I figured by the time I buy a digital timer with the battery backup, it was just more cost effective {to me} to go with the LOR DC-MP3 Showtime Director and have everything self contained and able to be locked inside a housing.

But for what you're attempting, personally, if it were me, I'd look into the DC-MP3 Showtime Director, like stated, once it's set and ready to go you never have to touch it or do anything to it. It all runs smoothly once you have the show{s}, up to 9, on the SD card.

The only exception to doing any time change on it is during any time changes, like some of us have to do at specific times of the year.

Been using mine for 3 years now and love it. Would never use a computer to run my show. And if you using RGB items, the Sandevices ELOR and E682 unit can be connected to the DC-MP3 Showtime Director very easily. You'd have to search for those threads on the forum here, as I don't have any RGB stuff as yet, but will be looking into the ELOR and E682 controller when I do get into the RGB stuff.

[Santas Helper]

I don't even have to worry about power failures, if power fails, the internal clock backup battery keeps the time and when power comes back up, if it's still during show time, show starts up and contiinues, and will still shut down at closing time.

Is power failure popular there?

Do people hang around when power fails and wait for the show to start back up when power comes back on? Just curious is all.

For us if power goes out, it was from a storm (tornado or ice) and the show is the last thing we worry about.

[Orville]

Is power failure popular there?

Do people hang around when power fails and wait for the show to start back up when power comes back on? Just curious is all.

For us if power goes out, it was from a storm (tornado or ice) and the show is the last thing we worry about.

No, they aren't. But occasionally the power may go out for a moment or two during a lightning storm around here. And the show starts back up from the beginning when it does happen. But, no it's not a common occurence, but if it happens when I'm not here, everything comes back up and starts again with no intervention from anyone.

So now, I don't worry about the show if we do have one, my DC-MP3 Showtime Director takes care of that for me, so I can concentrate on other issues that a power glitch/drop out, short or long failure may create.