I'm helping to revamp a museum exhibit that that used to use a pc software program to launch an audio file and a dmx sequence that would light up areas of a mural on a wall with a pair of Clay Paky "Stage Light 300"'s.

The PC is being pulled from the mix and I'm looking at replacing it with a hardware mp3 player and a dmx recorder/player...

I've worked with the mp3 players before... but I'm new to the dmx stuff. The lights are already wired (daisy-chained) via 5 pin XLR/dmx cables.

My questions are:

If I purchase a dmx recorder like the Elation AR-32M
http://www.elationlighting.com/produ...r%20Controller

Do I need to purchase a separate controller? OR... can i borrow a controller, use it to run through the light show live while recording, then pull it out of the mix and just playback the dmx lightshow with the Elation? Or can i just use the software that comes with it to program the recorder from my laptop and then pull it from the system?

Also... does anyone have experience with either the elation or a different dmx recorder? This exhibit is triggered by a visitor pressing an arcade-style button that was wired to the mouse. I was going splice the cable out of the mouse and wire it to the hardware mp3 player. I could then either daisy chain the wire into the dmx recorder OR I was intrigued by the possibility of triggering the dmx sequence via audio. Any ideas?

Finally... Is there a 5 pin to 3 pin dmx cable adaptor? How do i need to approach that?
Sorry for the newbie questions... Any help would be appreciated.
thanks
~Brent

Hi Karma,

You have a tricky situation, that i've seen before.
To program the AR-32 you will need a seperate controler plus a computer.
You program the controller, record the shows on the computer using AR-32 software, then you load the show to each of the buttons on the AR-32.. Pretty easy.
However triggering the MP3 and the light show to start at the same time with the push of one button cannot be done with the AR-32.

For this type of function I only have one recorder that can do what you want.
DR-512: http://www.elationlighting.com/product.asp?ProductIDNum...ecorder%20Controller

The DR-512 has a feature called SMPTE triggering. From here that's pretty much all I can tell you.

Your audio MP3 Player and exhibit device need to have a button where the song is played.. this inturn sends SMPTE signal to controller with plays the lights.. and this can only be done with SMPTE, as far as I know.

From here I have a source for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPTE_time_code

and regarding the 5 to 3 pin XLR.. we have them.
AC5P3PDMX. Their about $8.00 and you need to buy them through a dealer.

I hope this helps somewhat.

Best regards,