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

Hi, the Mass Transit Magazine published a nice article about the use of Barix IP Audio devices in a passenger information system, to be installed statewide in New Jersey. Read the article here:

http://www.masstransitmag.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=11301

Greetings

Johannes

After a good NAB in the US, where we announceed the Barix Reflector service, technology which “takes the IP out of Audio over IP”, our European people unfortunately got stuck in the US, waiting patiently to get a flight back.

If you want to read about the Reflector, what it does – how it works, please check it out here: www.barixreflector.com. In an essence, it allows you to use UNCONFIGURED – zero config – devices  on both ends of a “virtual audio cable over the internet”. You just log into the website, open a project, list the devices you want to use, do trivial feature selection, plug the devices on at two ends of the internet, anywhere (as long as the devices can get OUT to the internet) .. and audio magically streams !

Johannes

First day of ISE today – Barix is on site, showcasing the complete product portfolio of Audio over IP and IP control applications, including the new IO device server “Barionet 50”.

Visit us at the booth, mention this blog post to Marcel or myself and get invited for a Coffee !

Johannes

For the first time, Barix Audio over IP products are prominently shown on a trade show in South America!

CAPER 2009 opened the doors today, and Barix IP Audio devices are on display and demo at the booth of FS24, Barix’ south american distribution partner.

You can also meet me on the booth until friday afternoon, i made it here and yes, Argentina is really nice, good customers, wine, asado  and nice weather.

Argentina is not a new country for Barix, though – since some time, a rather large number of Barix devices have been installed in the Buenos Aires Subways stations – listen to the high quality of the announcements here to figure out what Barix Audio over IP devices can do for you in transportation installations …

.. and as usual, the first one to come up at the booth and ask me for a coffee will be cordially invited 🙂

Johannes

This post is in regards to the Barionet – control products, not audio products …

As you know, the Barionet is securing infrastructure, measuring and managing energy, voltages, controlling HVAC systems and supervising power substations since many years.

And, yes, quite some systems also use it for home automation applications ..

One request we hear quite often is that the device should have a RTC (realtime clock), so that it knows the time when it starts up, even if there is no network connection (once it gets the time via NTP from a server, it can maintain it locally, so the RTC is really only needed for having the time after startup with no network).

Good news: the current firmware supports the Dallas Onewire DS1904 RTC button. You can either connect it to the onewire interface, or you can even put it inside the barionet case if you can solder and mount it with velcro or the like.

Here is a link to a wiki article which describes how to do this: Barionet with RTC

What do you get from that ? A low cost universal, network connected I/O controller with RTC, speaking Modbus/TCP, SNMP as well as ASCII protocols, fully programmable …

Please stay tuned for news on the new Barionet 50 model, coming out in the next couple of weeks.
Johannes

Barix offers an IP Audio and Barix Product presentation workshop alongside NAB, Infocomm and IBC in Las Vegas, Orlando and Amsterdam this year. This workshop runs one day and covers all Barix products and applications in various industries. Workshop at NAB and IBC is focusing more on Broadcast, whereas the workship at Infocomm is targeting more general applications.

Please check out the schedule on the website

Please register early as space is limited !

Johannes

Barix has cut a deal with DMD2, a swiss content provider, makers of hotelradio.fm.

We will launch Barix Radio within the next days ! Official press release to follow.

Barix Radio is hosted by our friends at streamguys.com and provides a genuine mix of really good music, no ads, and is fully licensed in Switzerland, so you can listen to Barix Radio internationally for pleasure at home, in your office or even play it in your factory (you may owe local licensing in your country, something we cannot do for your or control).

Barix Radio, also serves as a nice test channel for Audio over IP applications, and we will preprogram the URL in the Streaming Client firmware so that you can instantly listen to nice music as soon as you have an internet connection (of course you can change that).

The stream is provided as a 128kbps MP3 stream, and an AACplus stream will follow soon.

Please provide feedback, either by our web contact form, or – of course, on the blog.

Johannes