All,

the Barix Exstreamer P5 now starts shipping. This very affordable IP Audio device is actually .. an IP Speaker. And at the same time, it is not .. the loudspeaker is missing.

IP Speaker from Barix

So … why ? What is the reason behind this ?

As we all know, architects want to have the choice of design, form and color if it comes to selecting a speaker. Installers need to pick a speaker with the right environmental specs. And the price, or a specific manufacturer, may be a decision criteria too for the selection of the speaker.

Other manufacturers offer “IP Speakers”. Such an IP Speaker limits the choices for the installer drastically, as the speaker design part is fixed, and eventually already installed speakers, which would be perfectly useable, need to be pulled out and replaced.

The Barix Exstreamer P5 solves this dilemma. It is EVERYTHING an IP Speaker needs to be, with the exception of .. the speaker ! You can use almost any commercially available loudspeaker, being it round, square, outdoor, indoor, brown, white, shiny, expensive or cheap … as long as it has 8 Ohm impedance (the vast majority is of that type) and it can accept min. 5W RMS driving power.

The installation is incredibly simpe – two loudspeaker wires are connected to the Exstreamer P5 (screw terminal block included), and the device is hooked up to the network a Cat5 cable (PoE providing switch, or use an in-line power supply). NO need to wire power and network separately to the device. Also, if space is a constraint, you can separate the speaker from the Exstreamer P5.
A lot of flexibility – and the good news is that the combo “Exstreamer P5 plus reasonsable ceiling speaker” costs less than the typical combined IP Speaker device !

This IP Speaker solution from Barix supports all the standard stuff others do – SIP, priority multicast stream etc, and in addition, our devices can also play MP3 or even AACplus streams, resulting in CD quality background music, if wanted.
And – last not least – the Barix Exstreamer P5 also has a local interface port for an affordable volume/source control. So you can even select a background music channel, set the volume – and of course, even if you turn down the volume and listen to background music, a priority page comes through at a predefined level.

Check this out now .. the Exstreamer P5 is the better IP Speaker ! Coming from a trusted brand in the IP Audio and VoIP space since 10 years .. Barix ! The same technology used in the Exstreamer P5 also runs evacuation systems in nuclear power plants and oil refineries, it is rock bottom stable, so there is no need to power cycle your ceiling mounted IP speakers or find that reboot button ever …

“The IP Speaker without the speaker”(TM), now from Barix.

Barix IP Audio devices are an excellent solution when it comes to special SIP interfacing applications. Being it an audio monitoring application, where a call should be placed if a microphone picks up sounds above a certain threshold, or a SIP door station – the standard SIP application, which can be loaded on all Annuncicom and Exstreamer devices, serves well.

But do you know that you can also use a Barix device as a SIP gateway to traditional, multizone paging systems ?

How do you then select a zone ?

The SIP firmware can control local relays on the device, if existing (Exstreamer 500, for example, offers 4 relays). These can be commanded in the SIP call by means of standard signalling (SIP Info and RFC2833). Many IP PBX’es also allow you to send specific commands when you initiate a call, this is the perfect time to select a zone automatically.

The Barix wiki contains a nice article describing the exact configuration necessary of an Asterisk instance to offer the luxury of direct zone selection by extension. If done this way, a user of the phone system can just dial one of a selection of extensions, and the Barix SIP Gateway (actually, an Exstreamer 500 or Annuncicom 1000 device) will select the specific zone(s) to page to automatically, based on the actual extension called.
Here is a link to the general overview of how this is done: SIP Paging

And here is the article detailing the bits and pieces on how to configure Asterisk to directly control the relays from SIP

Greetings !

Johannes

NY Times recently published a nice article about the benefits of Tai Chi for everyone’s general constitution.

At Barix, we have now our first year anniversary of implementing a weekly Tai Chi lesson in the office. We have scheduled the lesson so that all employees who are interested can attend, and it is defined “business matter” so the time spent counts towards the working time.

I guess some of our customers may have noticed a further decrease of bugs and increase in quality of our products (IP Audio devices) .. a coincidence ? I guess not .. we have good reasons to continue the Tai Chi classes !

Johannes

Innotrans 2010 Outside Exhibits

A Barix OEM Product could be spotted at Innotrans in the Goldenpass panoramic carriage in the outside exhibition area.

Goldenpass Carriage, Innotrans

The product, called “Annuncicom VME”, is effectively an Annuncicom in a VME card form factor, which fits in a common 19” VME rack and draws the power from the backplane. It features a ruggedized design, able to be compliant with EN50155, -40..+70′C temp range etc, with balanced audio, 2 RS-485 interfaces and digital I/O.

Goldenpass Carriage, Inside view

The Annuncicom VME is used by Railtec Systems GmbH in various projects as part of their Passenger Information Systems (IP based PIS). It is already the seccond product from Barix which is compliant with EN50155.

Hmm, in here:

In here .. which one is it ??

Being an OEM product, the Annuncicom VME is not available to the general market, if you have projects where you think this product can be of use, please contact me.

Johannes

the Annuncicom VME card

Hello,

here is a nice photo picturing a large installation of Barix Exstreamer 1000 devices (hundreds, this is only a part of the installation) …i can’t disclose as of now where that is – a press release and success story will follow

Johannes

Barix Exstreamer 1000 Installation

Hi,

we are currently exhibiting at Innotrans in Berlin, Hall 4.1 – swing by to check out our offering, and the first one referring to this blog entry, approaching us at the booth, will be treated with a coffee

The favorite for our visitors is the brand-new Annuncicom 155, the first Barix Audio over IP product which is EN50155 compliant and thus fulfills the stringent requirements for on-board equipment in trains, busses, vessels. With IP65 rating and -40… +70′C operating range, it is also suitable for outdoor installations, bus stations etc. A great product for IP Audio call boxes too, especially when used with the SIP firmware …
Here’s a pic of our booth.

Greetings

Johannes

Barix Booth at Innotrans

Folks,

a new STL firmware is now available here. This software provides a host of new features, yet simplifies the use. It can be downloaded freely and installed on all our standard Barix IP Audio devices (Exstreamer, Instreamer and Annuncicom). Not all features are working on all hardware (for example, on an Exstreamer 100 you can only use the decoding functionalities, obviously). Best performance and full features are available if you use it on Exstreamer 1000 or Exstreamer 500 hardware.

Here’s a screenshot:

STL Firmware screenshot

Major improvements and new features:
- New WEB User Interface with profiles (Locations) and single Apply
- Full Duplex PCM (uncompressed), up to 48KHz sample rate
- Analog Audio Output Silence Detection
- Analog Audio Input/Output VU meter bars
- Low Latency Frame Buffering
- Selectable high quality A/D converter (at 32 and 48 KHz)
- USB playback as fail-over or by relay trigger
- Reflector Client included in same load (either/or selection)

The camouflaging algorithm which takes care of dropouts has been further improved as well, brief dropouts due to RTP useage (which is unidirectional) are practically unhearable. It’s probably a quite well hidden secret that our devices do this since many years …

Greetings

Johannes

Many people use IP Phones at home. A very popular phone is the Siemens Gigaset product range, which provides analog line as well as VoIP/SIP connectivity. Models C470IP, C475IP, S675IP and S685IP are currently in the market.

But .. how do you connect a door intercom or door station to them ?

Fortunately, the latest SIP firmware for the Annuncicom makes a perfect companion for the Siemens Gigaset IP phones, it can talk with the Siemens phone via IP !

• A visitor, who presses the “ring” button on the phone, places a SIP call to the Siemens base. This can be done “peer-to-peer”, so it won’t consume an account entry, and it does not need a PBX or server to work.

• The DECT phones will ring, indicating a call from the IP address of the Annuncicom

• The user can answer the phone talk to the person in front of the door, and also open the door by typing a configurable number sequence on the keypad (for example, “11″).

• Even multiple Annuncicoms can be used in this fashion, for example, for front door and back door !

The solution works, of course, also with other SIP PBXes like Asterisk, but the beauty with the Siemens IP phones is that there is no servers, no PBX, only little configuration needed.

Contact us if you are interested in more details, or check out our wiki pages.

Johannes

Have you ever faced the situation that you want to use Multicast between subnets, but Routers don’t forward it OR the application/device generating the Multicast traffic is using a TTL of 1, so the blocks don’t get forwarded by the router?

Barix developed a “Multicast routing/tunneling” firmware for the Barionet which turns that device into a flexible, multi site multicast forwarder/router. Effectively, it bridges multiple multicast groups between multiple sites, and can also include single hosts. The functionality is independent on the actual protocols used with the Multicast, being it automation, IP Audio, Video, VoIP, SIP or RTP.

Here is the rough concept:

• A Barionet is installed in every subnet where multicast traffic needs to be pickeed up or delivered.
• The device(s) does “UDP” tunnelling to forward the Multicast packets to the other Barionet(s) in the other subnet(s). At the same time, they serve as a tunnel receiver/endpoint to receive encapsulated Multicasts from the other networks.
• Up to 8 independent multicasts (address/port) can be configured, and up to 8 destinations – either Barionets in other networks as tunnel endpoints, or hosts which then receive the packets unicast.
• The TTL field of the multicast blocks can be “ignored and set to configured value” or handled as usual (decrementing).
• Tunnelling can be configured to use “IP over IP” or plain UDP – both have advantages and disadvantages.
• Monitoring of the application is possible via SNMP.

The first customer uses the application to route VoIP/VHF radio traffic between multiple operations centers in a large company. However, applications can be found wherever multicast needs to be routed between subnets and routers, IT providers or policies prevent that.

Please contact Barix if you are interested in that solution!

Johannes

What if …

the Barionet, the IP Automation device from Barix, would tweet ?

This is quite simple to achieve. We have sample BCL code, which allows you to do just that. Being it contact closures or temp sensors, these can be monitored, and in case of out-of bound data, the Barionet can directly talk to the twitter servers and “tweet” an alarm message.

Contact us for the source code (and beware, it’s sample code ..)

Johannes