The ElecHouse MP3 Shield uses the WT5001-48L making it less flexible/controllable in some respects than shields using the VS1053B nevertheless, it is quite a useful little shield...
The audio quality is excellent and the five on board buttons (Volume Up, Down, Next, Previous and Play/Pause) could actually remove the need to program the board at all, just use the example sketch. You can of course write code to control some basic functionality but feedback from the WT5001 is somewhat limited...
No need to alter MP3 file names:
In my testing, I didn't bother rename the MP3 files using 8.3 dos format, I simply copied several folders directly from my computer to the SD card and assume the copy process did the renaming, then I plugged in the USB cable and pressed the play button.
All files are automatically played in the sequence you copied them to the SD/USB according to the info I read but I'm not so sure about that....
The Example Sketch:
The sketch sets the play mode and sets the volume, the console reports the total MP3 files on the SD card and that's it... Some code to randomise the play sequence would be a nice addition... Another option would be to add a pre-configured play-list to the SD card and use the Arduino to read and play the files...
If anyone has done any useful coding with this device, please post, in the mean time I might play with generating a randomised play sequence or testing some sort of playlist code...
...
Max SD Card Size:
Tested several MP3 shields with: ScanDisk 4GB, Toshiba 16GB and 32GB PNY SD micro cards (SdFat Library) and all have worked so I guess the limit is 32GB....