Nick Wyant, lighting designer, master electrician and installer/programmer at APA, looked for a way to enhance the functionality of the system when the college asked for additional features - including music distribution and room-specific functionality for individual classrooms. The solution was a combination of Xantech's CRMWIC Commercial Room Monitor and the IPRS232 XtraLink IP.
"In order to achieve this level of functionality, we had to be able to give each classroom and space its own IP address," Wyant explains. "You're not able to do that with standard serial routers. Then we discovered these Xantech products, and after a little experimentation we saw that we could give the client some really expanded capability at a very good price."
A computer in the college's security control centre can now control and broadcast music and other information to all or just selected classrooms and spaces, and still perform its core function of globally overriding any audio signals in any of the classrooms or spaces with emergency information.
"Everyone was very happy with the way this turned out," says Wyant, who notes that the system has performed very well for a year and a half now, underscoring the reliability of the Xantech equipment. "That's a big part of being cost-effective - not only costing less as a product but also not adding to maintenance costs over time. It's great gear."
(Jim Evans)
