Intercom / PA replacement

[ictdi...@kowhai.school.nz]

Our school wide vintage analog intercom and PA system is giving up the ghost and we are looking for potential replacement systems. Our dream solution would be for a cheap, simple VOIP phone to be in each class or area but the speakers on all the phones we have tested are nowhere near loud enough to be heard in a busy classroom environment. There are dedicated VOIP PA speaker boxes but they are ridiculously priced at near $1000 per unit. I have even contacted the phone manufacturer Yealink and pointed out the gap in the market for such a product but this doesn't help in the short term... (We moved to a 3CX VOIP phone system with Yealink handsets a year ago).

Does anyone have a good, affordable solution?

Cheers

Tom Mackintosh

ICT Director

Kowhai Intermediate School

[Alistair Baird]

Our school bell and fire alarm system is also a PA. Does your school have such and add-on ?

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Alistair Baird

IT Manager

St Peters College 

p 06 354 4198

m 021 482 937

e bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz

[Pete Mundy]

I was talking about this with a school IT tech a few months back!

If someone had the time & inkling to do so, it should be relatively straight-forward to build a suitable receiver box out of a Raspberry Pi, a small & cheap class-D audio amplifier and a speaker. All it needs to do is boot up and run VLC listening for a UDP broadcast stream and pipe it to the audio-output. The SD card could even be set up as read-only to allow them to boot and run while avoiding the potential filesystem corruption that Pis are renowned for.

Pop it all in a 3D-printed box and you've got nice cookie-cutter solution!

For the sender it would be much the same thing, except you'd need a USB audio-input dongle and a microphone (and maybe a mixer if you want to put music into it) in place of the class-D amp and speaker.

I reckon the receivers could be built for <$200 each and the sender probably a similar cost. It should even be plausible to have the receivers working over WiFi (using RPi-3's built in WiFi chipset). Hell, throw in a lipo battery and even the sender unit could be wifi! (think emergency situation where everyone is lining up at the marshalling point; someone could have a battery-powered mic that enables them to put audio out over the school-wide PA system from right out there on the quad).

Now, if only I had the time to build it...

Regards,

Pete Mundy
Fiberphone Ltd / MacGeek Ltd
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[Simon Wright]

Pete,

Do you have a modern fire system, one that has a speaker/alarm in every room? and that plays the alarm tone followed by "Please exit the building" upon a fire emergency?

We had our system upgraded in recent years with this type of system and with it its used for the class bells as it has various bell sounds built in. We are just using our old timer system to trigger when to play the sound.

This system also has a microphone attached to be used as a PA (setup in the admin office). When speaking with the guys from Wormalds they showed me that the master amplifier/input board as aux input for the microphone or any other audio source.

On my growing list of projects is to create a system for having better management of the bells and also for lockdown situations which ties in directly to the fire systems audio component.

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

Respect - Whakaute | Courage - Toa | Honour - Hōnore | Perseverance - Manawanui | Excellence - Hiranga

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[Pete Eaton]

For a new school, I'd be giving serious thought to one of these in each room:

https://www.gowifi.co.nz/wireless/uap-ac-edu-4.html

But something to look into would be using a Chromecast audio connected to a powered speaker in each class, e.g.

One of https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/DVAGOG2005I/GOOGLE-Chromecast-Audio-w-NZ-power-adapter

One of say https://surplustronics.co.nz/products/6670-hi-end-active-speaker-spj-800a-8-inch (there are better options, including in-wall I could think of)

And then connect them together into a speaker group:

https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6328691?hl=en

This at least uses off-the-shelf components, but is a bit 'burst' with lots of things that could go wrong.

One thing I have found is that when something we have in schools that breaks or needs replaced, whenever we ask about it we get told that they need the exact same thing again.   We can always come up with a justification!  It may be worth stepping back and asking some questions like: is this so that office, admin or leadership staff's time is optimised - should we be doing this over the learning in the class?  If we have to give notices all the time, does it mean we aren't organised enough?  If it is for non-life threatening, would the ability to SMS all students and staff do the same thing? Etc.

Pete

Sent from my iPhone

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[Simon Wright]

for reference, this is our fire system

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

Respect - Whakaute | Courage - Toa | Honour - Hōnore | Perseverance - Manawanui | Excellence - Hiranga

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[Mike Etheridge]

Now that is interesting. We are using the bell sound, but I had no idea there was PA capability there as well.

Will be talking to our Wormald people about this. Cheers.

Mike

[Pete Mundy]

Heya Simon

Yep I know the fire systems you mean! They're pretty good these days aren't they.

Another school I work with has one of those and they are currently implementing a separate recording for lockdown situations. They have a panic button at reception which triggers the lockdown 'alarm', and we're going to interface that into their phone system so that they can dial a 'secret' internal extension number from any school phone to trigger it.

I think this was in reaction to a situation where a staff member became trapped in a classroom in a dangerous situation.

Regards,

Pete Mundy
Fiberphone Ltd / MacGeek Ltd
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On 31/05/2017, at 12:17 PM, Simon Wright <simon....@obhs.school.nz> wrote:

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[Simon Wright]

I'd be interested to know more on that Pete.

The last time i spoke with the guy from wormalds, he didn't seem confident that the built in sounds were changeable as i think they were programmed into the chip on the amplifier board.

When we did a trial lockdown last year i had a somewhat camp sounding american lockdown audio clip i found online and played it from a laptop with the microphone beside it.

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

Respect - Whakaute | Courage - Toa | Honour - Hōnore | Perseverance - Manawanui | Excellence - Hiranga

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DISCLAIMER
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[Matt Strickland]

Most schools here in Hawkes Bay use the pertronic amplifiers: http://www.pertronic.co.nz/alerting_devices/ampifiers.php

The same american sounding voice. We have had ours reprogrammed as when an amplifier was replaced it had a custom voice in it, not sure if that was by design or not.

An alternative for a custom sound is to use the microphone interface to play a custom tone/recording (basically the Raspberry Pi idea adapted to an amplifier and triggering of sorts)

But using the fire speaker system is probably the easiest way to broadcast / PA a message, as long as the neighbours don't mind for those schools with external sounders + close residential proximity.

Matt

[Alistair Baird]

When our fire system was upgrade a few years ago, I remember our then Exec Officer by chance playing the sounds as wave files when I walked into his office. They are fully programmable wav files, but bear in mind they should make sense to students as quickly as possible.. So we have a more traditional electric fire bell bell sound for period bells, the fire alarm woop woop with the "please evacuate.." plus a wah wah type alert with "Please standby for further announcement". And I think there is another for lockdown with a "please stay away from the windows..." - Our Digital Technology teacher always hates this, there's Windows in front of every student (PC) !

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[Mike Etheridge]

*snort*

[Bevan McNaughton]

For our hostel we're looking at UniFi AC Edu devices, easily powered and good WiFi as well.

For the school, at this stage we haven't got a PA system but do have the "Please Evacuate the Building" fire alarm and bell system intertwined. It'll be interesting to see what is needed to add a PA option to it.

Bevan

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, UEWA, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

[Simon Wright]

Shouldn't be hard at all Bevan as i'm sure the modern fire systems are all the same/similar thats its just a matter of adding a microphone.

Just contact Wormalds (assuming they are the keepers of the system)

Regards
Simon Wright
ICT Manager

Best for boys through the right learning
2 Arthur Street, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand p: 03 477 5527 | f: 03 477 5468 | c: 021 773 229 | w: obhs.school.nz

Respect - Whakaute | Courage - Toa | Honour - Hōnore | Perseverance - Manawanui | Excellence - Hiranga

On 31 May 2017 at 14:21, Bevan McNaughton <bevan.mc...@southlandgirls.school.nz> wrote:

For our hostel we're looking at UniFi AC Edu devices, easily powered and good WiFi as well.

For the school, at this stage we haven't got a PA system but do have the "Please Evacuate the Building" fire alarm and bell system intertwined. It'll be interesting to see what is needed to add a PA option to it.

Bevan

On 31 May 2017 at 14:11, Mike Etheridge <mi...@etheridge.co.nz> wrote:

*snort*

On 31/05/2017, at 1:56 PM, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

And I think there is another for lockdown with a "please stay away from the windows..." - Our Digital Technology teacher always hates this, there's Windows in front of every student (PC) !

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, UEWA, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

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[Alistair Baird]

Fire Alarms need to be hard wired systems with sounders in every room (yes every room, even unoccupied ones), so work well as a PA system. Using wifi with built in speakers is not a good idea if you want to reach toilets etc, and rooms where there are no AP's (eg offices, dining rooms).

On 31 May 2017 at 14:21, Bevan McNaughton <bevan.mc...@southlandgirls.school.nz> wrote:

For our hostel we're looking at UniFi AC Edu devices, easily powered and good WiFi as well.

For the school, at this stage we haven't got a PA system but do have the "Please Evacuate the Building" fire alarm and bell system intertwined. It'll be interesting to see what is needed to add a PA option to it.

Bevan

On 31 May 2017 at 14:11, Mike Etheridge <mi...@etheridge.co.nz> wrote:

*snort*

On 31/05/2017, at 1:56 PM, Alistair Baird <bai...@stpeterspn.school.nz> wrote:

And I think there is another for lockdown with a "please stay away from the windows..." - Our Digital Technology teacher always hates this, there's Windows in front of every student (PC) !

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Bevan McNaughton

Intranet Manager

MCP, MTCNA, CAP, UEWA, Google Ed.

Southland Girls' High School

328 Tweed Street

Invercargill 9812

Phone: +64 3 211 6030

Fax:     +64 3 216 9010

Mobile: 027 223 2144

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