Can I do advanced scheduling with G3-MP3 Director?

[BradWorld]

Hi all. I am new here.  I am in the midst of converting a light show installation to LOR from another brand that isn't working so well.  I have everything up and running from a hardware and software perspective, and have been happy with the LOR gear thus far.   I also have my sequences, shows, and schedules done on the PC.   My question is whether I can now transfer that to the MP3 director?  I have not been able to find the same level of granular scheduling and show manipulation on the Hardware Utility.  The Show Editor and Scheduler apps, however, do exactly what I want.  How can I schedule to that advanced level using the MP3 Director instead of a PC?   Essentially I would like to schedule my show to operate only within specific hours, but kick off a single sequence at a specific time interval (such as every 20 minutes or every hour).  I will need it to rotate through a set of 6 sequences each time it starts the show.  So if I were doing this hourly, at 1 PM it would play sequence 1; 2 PM play sequence 2; etc.  And rotate through the six sequences in order, and start back at the top on the seventh hour and so on.  Any help or direction would be appreciated. thanks.

 

 

[BradWorld]

No one?   I figured someone would chime in.   I did figure out a work around, but I would still appreciate an answer to the primary question.  what I did was create a single show, with all 6 songs.  and I created animated  spacer sequences between each song to make the song + spacer sequence = 20 minutes (or one hour as needed).  That worked out very well.  But I still would like to know if all of the granular scheduling functions available on the PC version of the software is available on the MP3 Director. Thanks. 

[Don]

If you use the LOR Hardware Utility (HWU) and click on the MP3 tab, you'll see additional options for creating your shows.

 

The MP3 director has options for Play Once, Play Continuously, etc. You can also choose to play the show every X amount of time. You can even have a 'static' sequence playing in between shows.

 

Sometimes you have to be creative in your scheduling, but the scheduling options are pretty good for the director.

[Jim Hans]

The MP3 director can handle multiple shows so create one show for 1pm to do,sequence 1, 2 PM for sequence 2 etc.

[BradWorld]

Thanks for the responses guys.   The issue I am having is this...  There are a lot of features on the PC software that are not available with the MP3 Director.  When I purchased three MP3 Directors for my projects, I was led to believe that the MP3 Director was a replacement for the PC software, and that it would have the same capabilities.  I reread the sales sheets and web page for MP3 Director the other day, and I still feel that those things lead one to believe that what you do on the PC side of things can be accomplished on the MP3 Director.  But it cant.  I started this post to see if I was missing something... a software utility, or some app that would allow me to schedule more tightly with the MP3 Director.   But now I assume that it doesnt exist, and the granular scheduling of the PC software just can not be done when using the MP3 Director. 

 

On the PC software I can create a separate "show" for each of my 6 sequences.  Then I use the scheduler to slot them in at specific times of the day, and vary that for specific days of the week.  The software in the HWU that sends the programming to the MP3 Director only allows up to 9 shows, so this plan wont work.  Not enough slots. 

 

With the PC software, you can set a proper schedule, with a weekly schedule as default, and what they call the "calendar" schedule to program different specific days with a deviant schedule that will override the default schedule for that day.  For example, I want my shows to play from 5 PM to 9:30 PM on weekdays, from Noon to 10 PM on weekends, but then on Christmas eve and day, I want it to play from 9 AM to 10 PM.  As far as I know, I can not accomplish this on the MP3 Director without getting very creative.  The scheduler in the HWU will not accommodate such a granular schedule.

 

As I mentioned before, I did discover that I could make static "spacer" sequences to time everything out.  And I have made a couple of SD cards with the different schedules.  I have this all programmed and working correctly, so as you said, a little creativity can go a long way.   So I am fine for now, but it has become clear that the MP3 Director has some serious limitations when compared to the granular scheduling options of the PC software.  Next time I do a project like this, i might opt to throw a PC in there instead of the MP3 Director.  

[Nick Ferchau]

I am dealing with a similar situation. i need to create a schedule that will play a show that is 6:20:17 long at 6pm and 9pm but I have two animated sequences that are 20 minutes each that I need to run between shows as a "screen saver". any suggestions on the best way to schedule that both for the pc and the G3MP3?

[Don]

I am dealing with a similar situation. i need to create a schedule that will play a show that is 6:20:17 long at 6pm and 9pm but I have two animated sequences that are 20 minutes each that I need to run between shows as a "screen saver". any suggestions on the best way to schedule that both for the pc and the G3MP3?

 

6 hours long? or 6 min, 20sec, 17ms?

 

There is an option to repeat the show every 10, 15, 30 and 60 minutes. You can define what happens during that time frame. You could also set up a show to have musical and animation sequences in the MP3 Player Showlist.

[Trickyd]

I have a slight problem in  understanding the g3 mpe player.

 

I use this moment three switches to interrupt/trigger the time-scheduled animation show with three separate uninterruptable music shows, set to run once per trigger

 

What is the best option:

 

show1 is the time scheduled animation show    show 2,3 and 4 are the music shows and the corresponding switches assigned to inputs 2,3 4.  maximum usable switches 5 pieces this way   tested this and this works fine.

 

or

 

timed animation show set to show 4 and the three triggered shows to show1,2 and 3.

 

even with the use of the maximum of 6 switches this would result in :

 

triggered shows 1,2,3,4,5 and 6

 

and the timed interruptable animation show set to show 7?  is this possible?

 

who knows what is best??

 

Dick

The Netherlands

[DaisyJaime]

It seems that my reply is come late.

[BradWorld]

Hello everyone.  I am the original poster.  I ended up ditching the MP3 Director, and using a PC to run the light shows.  It was a solid requirement to run the shows on a different schedule as per each calendar day.  therefore there was no other way around it beside switching to a PC.  Very disappointing.  Especially since the Animated Lighting stuff I was replacing had the calendar capability in their Monster Brain.  Only problem was that the Monster Brain had a mind of its own and did random things it was not supposed to do. Like run the Peanuts song 300 times in a row for no reason.  Or suddenly twinkle the lights on and off for hours.   The LOR system running from a PC does everything I need it to do plus some.  So the project is working perfectly.  It is just a bummer that i now have to deal with the instability of using a Windows PC, instead of having a rock solid appliance like the MP3 Director running everything.  Fingers crossed that the laptop continues to remain stable until after the holidays.

 

Thanks for all the good info!  I am a solid LOR fan now.