Chris_

Sounds like the same email as we got earlier in the week. The pricing does sound good, and they say that install is £50 or something insignificant, although there's no Virgin Media available in our area so the install cost will be significantly more!!

I'd look at the Sennheiser EW100 G3 stuff, or the Sennheiser XSW range if you're on a tight budget.

We got some great quotes on leased lines going direct to Virgin Media, for example, we could get a 1Gb line on a 1Gb from VM for around the same price as a 200Mb line on a 1Gb bearer from BT. We might not need 1Gb now but we max out the 100Mb line we currently have at peak times with ~150 users.

Do they all need microphones the whole time? Might be better to hire a smaller number 6-12, then swap the beltpacks.

Although the Tripplite one has 6x outputs, only 4 are battery backed, the other 2 are only surge protected, and by using the software on a PC connected via USB/serial you can switch these 2 sockets on/off.

We decided to go with a 1u UPS from Tripplite for all of our switch cabs, mainly because it's quite shallow at around 30cm (the APC equivalent is around 40cm) and we didn't really fancy replacing 25+ cabinets around the school with deeper ones!! Tripplite 500va 19-inch Rackmount Smartpro Ups (6 C13 Outlet) - Ebuyer

Something to bear in mind.. as both schools have internet provided by the county via the same ISP, it's most likely that if your school loses its internet connection, chances are that the school next door will have also lost theirs!

2000 devices over 6 access points seems a little optimistic. I think the suggested max clients on the UniFi AC is ~200. Also, the UAP-AC requires 802.3AT (POE+), the toughswitches only provide passive POE.

People have succeeded installing newer versions of OS X on the unsupported MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. Not sure if it's the same for the MacBook? Macosxbootloader by Pike R. Alpha

We've got some Chauvet RGBW LEDs and some LEDJ 7Q5 RGBW LEDs. The Chauvet ones are of a higher build quality, and slightly deeper colours, but then they were 5 times the price of the LEDJ lights! The LEDJ ones work fine for us using them as uplighters around rooms for events, or for adding colours to school productions.

You should probably look in to setting the min RSSI values on the APs so that the client disconnects if it's signal is below $value and will then connect to a different AP with stronger signal. This previously had to be done by manually editing a config file on the controller. With the latest release (4.8.12) it can now be set within the controller web UI.

If you have access to the RM Knowledge library it's article DWN443080.

So there's 4 buttons, enter, mode, up and down? When you've selected A001 by pressing mode a few times, I'd have thought you could press enter to select what channel mode to operate in?

When the screen says A001, if you then press 'Enter' then can you use up/down to select 3 or 4 channel mode. This should then allow you to control red, green, blue, white/amber when connected to the controller. Although very basic, something like this controller (Stairville DDC-6 DMX Controller - Thomann UK) would be very straightforward to use. I've used much more complex lighting desks, but I've never managed to get my head around controllers like that you've been landed with!

We have just shy of 100 APs throughout our buildings, we're a nursery, primary and small secondary. They're excellent and very capable access points for the price. With every release of the controller more functionality is added, for example the latest release included band steering. We have a few SSIDs available on different VLANs offering BYOD access for users using radius authentication with our Smoothwall. If you do go down the UniFi route it's well worth considering the 2 day Ubiquiti Enterprise Wireless Admin training course.

No reason why you can't connect another AP to the secondary port. On the UEWA course we all connected the UAP Pro's together linking out of each ones secondary port for one exercise where they all needed to be on the same controller.

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.

We've got a range of Toshiba copiers from Arena also, all running PaperCut MF. The copiers themselves are generally fine, a few issues here and there but no different to any other copiers really.

You could also look at using something like Meraki System Manager and make use of the geofencing function to alert you, and or disable phones if they leave a certain area (ie the school).

Why do manufacturers decide to get rid of the screws for holding the VGA cable in place?! Who wants their VGA cable falling out mid presentation!

We have a few LG screens around school for digital signage use and find that they're pretty good, especially as they have built in timer options to turn on/off on a schedule. We also had 3x 50" Digihome TV's from Ebuyer, all 3 of them failed with the same fault. 2x within their warranty period and the 3rd just outside the 12 months.

I like the HP switches so would recommend something along the lines of this: HP J9980A - 1820-24G SWITCH - Ebuyer

We usually use these Sahara speakers. Cheap and do the job. 1050005 - SAHARA - SPEAKERS, 30W WITH REMOTE VOLUME | CPC UK

We use a Teradek Vidiu (Teradek VidiU HDMI H264 Live Streaming Encoder | Teradek, LLC - Wireless HD Video) to stream some of our school events via YouTube. It's not the cheapest of options but it's certainly a neat little box of tricks! It has a HDMI in to connect a camera for video and audio, it also has an additional audio input for external microphones, it has built in wired LAN, wi-fi, and a USB port for 3G/4G dongle and a battery for mobile streaming. Out of the box it supports a few streaming services such as YouTube, UStream, Livestream etc but can also be manually configured for others.

But then if BT are providing the 2 lines over the same fibre, through the same ducts, back to the same exchange then there won't really be any redundancy benefit. Probably cheaper to go with the 1x 200mb line. BT have a pretty good SLA though so hopefully downtime would be kept to a minimum, even with a single connection.