Hey all,
I have been trying to set up my mum with a way to run her dance classes for many, many years using a PC and ripped music. I think there might even be some questions on these forums that go back to Media Jukebox 12, but we have now moved on to MC 16. As with everything, time, money and equipment have held everything up, yet the biggest hassle has been getting hold of a decent RF remote control for a PC as the IR ones simply wouldn't cut it across a hall or in open space. I have just purchases this remote from KeySpan (
http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=847&txtModelID=3910) that I finally hope will do the job.
So, what exactly am I after? Well, my poor old mum is now getting on (80 this year) and she has lugged a CD player and CDs to all of her dance classes plus amp and speaker for many years. Whilst this will not get away from the amp and speakers, I want her to be able to plug in a laptop and use MC with the remote to run a pre built playlist and at least get away from the CDs and player.
I have gotten her to use MC for some time to rip and organise her music on her desk top PC, and she can create playlists and burn CDs with no issue. Now I'm going to get her either a small netbook or giving her my hand-me-down my laptop in order that she can plug it into the amp and play the playlists directly, however there are a few provisos.
Her eyes aren't what they used to be so on the portable machine I though I could set it up that MC start in theatre mode and may be tailor the options and menus to just show what she needs with no extraneous fluff. I need to get the remote to work so that she can simply select a play-list and play/pause/skip etc tracks on that playlist.
However, all the music and original play lists will be on the desktop PC so I need to set up a real simple method of synchronising one machine with another. In the past I personally have used things like GoodSync or Microsoft's sync toy to synchronise files between computer, but wondered if there were any other options out there or indeed if this will work for MC between two PC's?
Whilst she is OK on the PC and I proud that she can use MC to this degree, she is still a bit of a beginner and I want to set this up so that it works as simple as possible - i.e. she opens the laptop, plugs into the amp and presses just a couple of buttons of the remote to get it all working.
How would any of you guys set this up? How would you configure MC and what would you do to make this a simple and painless as possible. I know MC can be installed in a "portable mode", but have never done this and am not sure if this would be what is required in this instance. Whats' the best way to set MC up to work on two machine considering theta the second machine will need to be used away from the home - will changes made on one machine screw up the way the other one works?
All ideas and thoughts welcome.
Cheers All
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Topic: After many years, I can finally set up my mums virtual DJ, but how best to do it (Read 1442 times)