School Bell Systems

[timbo343]

I was wondering after my return from BETT, if anyone has setup their own bell system with PoE speakers and a free management system. We were talking about this earlier this week and thought, how hard can it be to do it our selves?

[dblight]

We have lots of digital signage screens around the college and we are just configuring OneLan to play an audio file at specific times to act as a digital bell

[twin--turbo]

Why complicate a bell?

 

How loud is a POE speaker ( POE+ can deliver a Max of 30W but not all of that would be amplification) Do you have +?

probably need a speaker per classroom really.

 

Do you have a decent time source?

 

 

What with the cost of a switch, lots of speakers, getting it reliable, and more..

 

 

Seems to be trying to re-solve a problem that was nailed decades ago.

 

TT

[timbo343]

Well we are looking to see what options are about as we have a seperate building that has its own bell system so we are thinking about linking the 2 together.

 

I didn't know POE+ existed and we haven't got any PoE switches at the moment, that could all change if we get our new phone system. A speaker in each classroom would be what we needed (possibly about 65 of them.) Would need to look into POE+.

 

Time source, that would be a machine connected to a NTP server.

 

We don't have any budget for this so looking to do it as cheap as possible. I did suggest someone buys a handheld bell .

[twin--turbo]

I didn't know POE+ existed and we haven't got any PoE switches at the moment, that could all change if we get our new phone system. A speaker in each classroom would be what we needed (possibly about 65 of them.) Would need to look into POE+.

 

We don't have any budget for this so looking to do it as cheap as possible. I did suggest someone buys a handheld bell .

 

Be very careful

 

Countless times I have had people asking why the new phone is not powering up on their 48 port POE switch. They have not looked in to Demand, Consumption and availability of POE power... A switch may be 48 Port POE but that may only be able to deliver 5.4w per port .

 

65 speakers at 15.4W ( max for normal POE ) is 1Kw of POE which is way beyond most switches can deliver ( although that would probably be between two switches.. But add in phones as well and your drawing more.. ( + wi-fi, cctv ) just keep it in mind that you can't just plug all the kit in and expect the power to be there. Also many devices will not tell the switch what power they need so the switch will just reserve 15.4W POE or 30W POE+ regardless and take it out of the available power budget...

 

 

Don't try to do it on the cheep, or it will ultimately be a white elephant.

 

Last piece of advice.. Two hand held bells is better than one for redundancy.

 

TT

[johnat1121]

Ubiquiti were showing off a new AP which is built specifically for education and has built in public address system https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-edu/ but at £412 per AP it could pretty expensive and echoing whats been said about POE budgets these APs would need 30w of 803.2at each !

[datar_]

Ubiquiti were showing off a new AP which is built specifically for education and has built in public address system https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-edu/ but at £412 per AP it could pretty expensive and echoing whats been said about POE budgets these APs would need 30w of 803.2at each !

 

Ah in before me...

 

At my first workplace, there was a tannoy system in the high school, for the office staff to announce things school wide. This was literally a PC hooked up to an Amp, the Microphone was push to talk and the computer was set with Scheduled tasks to run "bell.wav" when it needed to.

 

Now I would probably try and push the Unifi EDU AP's, their potential looks great considering when you look into it you can either tannoy from a mobile device or what it seems to be casting/airplaying from a device to your AP's.

 

Some schools I'm been in recently use a Bodet system. Wireless Speakers are fitted around the school and it's all controlled from one box.

 

http://www.bodet.co.uk/bell-systems/select-your-bell-system.html

Edited January 28, 2016 by datar_

[Chris_]

Have you considered using the fire alarms as sounders, then just having a device triggering them at the appropriate times.

 

We have an IAG classchange timer IAG Classchange | Lesson Bell & Emergency Lockdown System ringing the bells in one building, then via the network triggering a POE powered relay device in another building connected to the fire alarm.

 

We're currently looking to expand it to more buildings with the use of Ubiquiti mFi to interface with the alarm panels.

[Jawloms]

Have you considered using the fire alarms as sounders, then just having a device triggering them at the appropriate times.

 

We have an IAG classchange timer IAG Classchange | Lesson Bell & Emergency Lockdown System ringing the bells in one building, then via the network triggering a POE powered relay device in another building connected to the fire alarm.

 

We're currently looking to expand it to more buildings with the use of Ubiquiti mFi to interface with the alarm panels.

 

Need to make sure this is done properly as at my last place they did this and at the next end of lesson bell all the fire doors shut, the lift went to the ground floor and the gas got shut off to the entire building. Phil in the kitchen trying to make several hundred school dinners was not a happy bunny. How we laughed though......

[NB9457]

New schools tend to have it integrated with the fire alarm system, works really well. As mentioned, it is possible to retrofit this system, but I'd imagine it'd all depend on the age of the fire alarm system and what sounders it uses.

 

Will the UniFi offering is good, what would its life span be? Technology does tend to change and within ten years, you could be wanting new WiFi and there's no telling if UniFi or another company would offer this later down the line.

 

I'd personally go for the retrofit of the fire alarm if possible or a PA system. Whilst the cost could be higher, they are stand alone, have excellent reliability and redundancy and a much longer lifespan, especially with the PA side, schools are still using speakers a few decades old now.

[Boredguy]

We were using timers on the actual alarm panels to pulse the bells 3 times for a couple of seconds, and our maglock relays on the fire doors will only trigger if the activation contact exceeds 10 seconds at once.

 

When we moved to Bodet as our controller instead of 4 separate timers, we just hooked wireless relays to the alarm panels in the other buildings, and added a couple of melody sounders in areas that did not have a bell already. At least now with it being NTP sync'd all 11 buildings have lesson change going off at once... plus we added a manual activation button so for fire drills we can set the bells ringing at each panel without needing 5 people

[maark]

Or scrap bells all together - why do we need them when every member of staff has something that can tell the time? Surely a relic from the past.

Not that we have here :-)

[MatthewL]

If you need a bell, why over complicate things. Rig bells up linked to a timer like they used to be and be done with it. It worked then, it will work now and be far cheaper.

[mavhc]

Because you have to link up the bells and power them, and you already have tonnes of ethernet cable installed (hopefully)

[twin--turbo]

Or scrap bells all together - why do we need them when every member of staff has something that can tell the time? Surely a relic from the past.

Not that we have here :-)

 

If one teacher releases their class according to "their time" it may be five minuets before real time and the receiving class may be 5 minutes after real time.

 

Chaos Time.

 

TT

[rich_tech]

Think ours is a timer linked into the fire alarm here, gives a couple of short blasts at the end of a lesson here, everyone knows if it stays longer on to evacuate

[maark]

If one teacher releases their class according to "their time" it may be five minuets before real time and the receiving class may be 5 minutes after real time.

 

Chaos Time.

 

TT

 

all teachers have laptops here for sims which sync time to domain which is synced to time server so are 100% accurate

[VeryPC_Anthony_L]

In both the schools I have worked in the utilised the Fire alarm bells. One of them was a brand new school and they even went as far as having different pitches for different meanings, not that I could remember what they were.