Project Outline
This new build, London based academy required a site wide academy school lockdown system to communicate and co-ordinate audio broadcast messages indicating alert status for a variety of identified ‘invacuation’ threats and security scenarios.
As a new build site, we were able to engage with project planners and consulting engineers at an early stage to discuss and define the relevant technical and operational detail requirements for this project. The primary audio application requirement was for an academy school lockdown system that could also be used as a regular day-to-day Public Address (PA) / tannoy system for general announcement broadcasts (eg. updates, events, information).
Audio Applications
Audio Specification & Technologies
- IP Audio distribution / topology
- IP Audio Matrix
- IP Audio Message Player
- Natural ‘Text-to-Speech’ MP3 audio message files
Project Details
Our initial project works were engaged through the wider project consultants, engineers and architects. These co-operative works included planning and design meetings with the customer to apprise certain capability and aesthetic elements of the project such as speaker types, designs and colours.
Much of our technical and capability specification related to audio technology options. We discussed IP audio and traditional audio in some length, identifying important operational and functional elements that could only be achieved using IP audio. Our resulting design solution for this project was based on an IP audio distribution, with local zone cabling to traditional area speakers. Routing audio via IP and decision making (zones, inputs, scheduling etc..) through an IP audio matrix for onward connection to traditional local speakers in this way has proven to be a very popular topology proposition, offering a great balance of capability & flexibility against overall cost.
An IP audio message player entity was installed. This device is directly accessed for audio message playout via a web interface (secure access, with simple GUI buttons). Google natural Text-to-Speech and specialist audio processing software was used to fine tune and create the resulting MP3 audio files.
