Unpacking items
Your trolley comes packed in the original box from MTH inside an outer carton for shipping.
You should have the following parts in the MTH box.
- Trolley
- MicroSD card adapter
Operation as shipped
The trolley is shipped to run continuously randomly selecting animations. All you need to do it put on the track and power it up.
Operation using Bumpers
There are left and right bumpers on the trolley. If you turn the trolley over you will see they are marked L for left and R for right.
The left bumper activates the animation. The right bumper activates the main menu.
After the animation is started you can interrupt it by pressing the left bumper.
Continuous mode
If you want animations to run continuously you can hold the left bumper in until you hear the announcement “Continuous mode activated…”
The trolley will start and run continuously. This setting is saved so when you power down the trolley and power on again the trolley will run continuously.
To deactivate continuous mode hold the left bumper in until you hear “Continuous mode deactivated”.
The driving wheels are near the left bumper. So you can lift the left side of the trolley up a bit so the wheels will spin freely while the deactivation process is completed.
Main menu
If you press the right bumper a message will play “main menu press left button to scroll through items press right button to select the item”.
Next pressing in the left bumper will scroll through the different options. When you hear the option you want press the right bumper to select it.
Further instructions will play for each menu option.
If the menu has an “Exit this menu” option, use that to get back to “animations are now active”. Menus without the “Exit this menu” option will automatically go back to “animations are now active”.
Menu summary
- Choose Sounds
- Angel have hear on high
- Auld lang syne jazzy version
- Away in a manger
- Carol of the bells
- Stop Christmas town
- dance of the sugar plum fairy
- …
- Randomly choose all sound tracks
- Volume level adjustment
- Lower volume
- Raise volume
- Hold the right button to commit changes
- Webpage options
- Web page on
- Web page off
- Hear web url
- Exit this menu
- Add my sound or animate them
- Time stamp mode on
- Time stamp mode off
- Hear instructions
- Exit this menu
- Exit this menu
Choose sounds menu
This option is the most commonly selected menu option.
Press the right bumper to get into the main menu.
Then press the left bumper. When you hear “Choose sounds” press the right bumper to confirm. You will then hear another menu announcement “Sound selection menu…”
Press the left bumper to scroll through the built in scripts, random sound options, and your added scripts (indicated by Song 10, Song 11 …).
The random sound options are:
- Randomly choose all sound tracks
Once you have found the option you want press the right bumper and it will confirm with “you have successfully selected your option, animations are now active”
Operation using webpage
To operate the trolley using a web page it must be on your network.
There are two ways to set it up on your network.
Once you have set up the network on the trolley cycle turn on the power. It should make an announcement that the animator is now on your network to access it type “animator-trolley.local” in your browser.
- Create a 2.4g guest network on you router called “jimmytrainsguest” with a blank password. The trolley is set to this network as a default.
- Enter you SSID and password on the microSD card inserted in the animator. See “Setting up SSID and Password” below.
You can use this web page to activate animation and change settings from your phone, tablet or computer. All you need to do is be connected to your local wifi network.
Click on the tabs “Train Control, Animations, Settings or Animation Tables” and the following pages will be displayed.
Train Control tab
The train control page lets you drive the trolley from you phone, tablet or computer. Make sure no animations are playing to drive the train.
The wheel controls the throttle of the trolley. Moving the wheel clockwise from the 12 o clock position will move the trolley forward. The opposite direction is reverse.
Pressing “Stop” will set throttle to zero. Pressing the “Horn” will blow the horn, the bell will ring the bell, elf will play elf sounds, station stops will play station stops, Santa will play message from Santa, Christmas story will play phrases from the Christmas story.
Animations tab
On the animations page you can pick random sound tracks or a specific sound track. If you click on “Continuous Mode On” the animations will run continuously.
Note: When choosing any option on the web page the button will change to a lighter color indicating it is in process. You can press other buttons but they will not be processed until the previous one is finished.
“Time stamp mode on” will set your animator to timing stamp mode where you can use the right button to set the transition points in your sound track. This is used for timing your own songs or can use it to re-time the built in sound tracks if you want.
If you press the left bumper the last selected sound track will start. Then you press right bumper at key points in the sound track where you want an animation to occur.
Settings tab
This page will allow you to set different settings.
You can set the volume by pressing one of the buttons.
You can set the color of lights by choosing the color. All thirteen lights on the trolley will change.
If you are in timestamp mode each time you choose a color it will be saved as an animation point. This can be a fun technique to use.
The animator web page name can be changed. Just type in the name desired and press change. The web page will now broadcast the url entered, plus dot local appended to the end. This is useful if you have more than one animator and want to distinguish between them.
“Reset to defaults” will set the animator to the factory defaults.
Animation Tables tab
Each animation is controlled by a script table. The script table consists of rows of values TimeStamp, TimeCode and animation commands.
The TimeStamp is in seconds and is when the commands will be called. When manually entering a TimeStamp make sure you hit return so it is accepted.
TimeCode is like a TimeStamp but used when using Davinci Resolve timeline markers to pick times. When manually entering a TimeCode make sure you hit return so it is accepted.
To get a timeline, first press the track you want to change. This will download the timeline to the table. Then edit the animation commands as desired. You can test the animation commands by pressing “TST” on each row.
You can insert “INS”, add “ADD” or delete “DEL” timeline rows as desired.
Once you have made all the changes you want press “SAVE ANIMATIONS”.
Setting up SSID and password
To enable web access to your animator you will need to make changes to your microSD card that is inserted in your animator.
The animator is a ioT device and only works on a 2.4G network. So set the SSID and password for that network.
- Remove the animator trolley from the track.
- Pull the roof off the trolley. It should snap off.
Locate the microSD card.
- Remove the microSD card by first pushing it in and it will pop out so you can grab it from the sides.
- Insert the card in a microSD card reader on your computer.
- Make a copy of env_example.json file
- Rename the copy to env.json
- Edit the env.json file with your SSID and password
- After you made your changes reinsert the microSD card in the animator with the gold contacts up and put the animator back on the track.
- It should announce that the animator is now on the network.
- Confirm the web page works by navigating to animator-trolley.local on your computer or phone that is connected to the same network the trolley is on.
- To put the roof back on align to the snaps in the trolley cab and press down. Note: Make sure the black wires are out of the way of the snaps.
Adding your own songs
To add your own songs onto the animator you can do this by first converting your songs to a wav file encoded with a sample rate of 22050 Hz and a sample format of 16-bit. They must be in stereo.
You can do this with audacity a free application. https://www.audacityteam.org/
Once you have installed audacity open the music file that you want to put on the animator.
Open your file. Adjust the volume by selecting the whole track and normalize to -1db.
Then go to the file menu and choose export/export as wav. On the export audio screen change the sample rate to 22050 as shown.
Note: Your screen might be different than the one below. See audacity documentation for details.
Then save the file to the microSd card under the “snds” and name it with lower case letters and spaces like “my music file.wav”.
Repeat this for the rest of your songs.
Repeat the above steps for all your songs.
Once you have all your files on the microSD card eject it and reinsert it into the animator and put it back on the track.
Create your own animations
Now that you have created the audio tracks you want for your trolley animation you can create an animation using scripts.
Scripts are a table of values that trigger based on time elapsed since the animation started. We call these TimeStamps. You can create these TimeStamps manually by adding rows to your table and entering values or you can create them automatically based on button presses while playing your song.
Scripts are only created using the animators web page. You need to have the animator setup on your for this to work.
Got to the “animations table” and press “create animation” to get started. A dialog will appear to give it a name. Only use numbers and lower case letters in the name. For example “my animation”. Press “Save animation” to create the animation script. You will then see it in the list of buttons. Press the button to open the table.
The first line in the table will be. “MB0name of your track.wav”. Modify this name to match your sound track name for example “MB0name of your track.wav” and press “Save animation”
Now you can timestamp your animations. First select it under the animations tab. The sound track will start and stop.
New select “Timestamp mode on” on the animations page. An anoucement will play giving instructions.
Now you are ready. Press the left bumper. The sound track will play. Press the right bumper for every time you want a animation to occur. Typically you time it to key moments in the sound track. After the sound track is finished it will announce that the file has been saved. Your animation is now programmed.
Press the left bumper and enjoy your animation.
Animation Commands
TXXX
Train XXX throttle -100 to 100
This command controls the throttle. Positive values will make the trolley go forward. Negative ones will make the trolley go backward.
TA_XXX_AAA
Train XXX throttle -100 to 100 AAA acceleration increments 1 to 100
This command controls the throttle using acceleration and deceleration. Positive values will make the trolley go forward. Negative one goes backward.
The throttle will slowly ramp up or down from the current throttle setting using the acceleration setting.
ZRAND
Random rainbow, fire, or color change.
ZRTTT
Rainbow, TTT cycle speed in decimal seconds
The rainbow command will cause the lights to move colors down the light string for a dynamic rainbow effect.
ZFIRE
This is the fire command which will twinkle the led to look like a fire using random colors.
ZCOLCH
This is the color change command which will set each of the LEDS to a random color of red, blue or green.
LNZZZ_R_G_B
ZZZ (0 All, 1 to 999) RGB 0 to 255
This command controls the neo pixel lights. There are 13 lights in the trolley where light 1 is the left most driver position and 7 is the right most driver position. 2 – 6 are the passengers on one side of the trolley and 8 – 13 are the passengers on the other side.
If you use 0 for the ZZZ setting all the lights will be set.
BXXX
B = brightness, XXX = intensity 0 to 100
This is the light brightness command. B0 will turn all the lights off. B100 will set all lights to full brightness.
Note: This will not override the settings set using the LNXXX command. It is primary used before using the FXXX command to fade lights on or off.
FXXX
F = fade, XXX = intensity 0 to 100
This is the light fade command. F0 will fade all the lights to off. F100 will fade all lights to full brightness. B100, F50, will set full brightness and then fade lights to 50.
MBRXXX
Music background, R repeat (0 no, 1 yes), XXX (file name with wav extension) must be in first row of the script all others row this command will be ignored.
This command sets the music for the background of the animation. This music will immediately play when the animation starts.
The command must be in the first row of the animation at time stamp 0.
If the command is set to repeat mode the sound will repeat over and over. This is primary used for trolley noises. Do not use repeat mode for a musical track you only want to play once and stop.
MALXXX
A (P play music, W play music wait, S stop music), L = file location (E elves, B bells, H horns, T stops) XXX (file name with mp3 or wav extension, if RAND random selection of folder, SEQN play next in sequence, SEQF play first in sequence)
This command plays a file. The P options will start the file playing and immediately proceed. The W option will wait.
HA
A (H Horn, B Bell)
This command blows the horn or bell.
Happy Animating!