Live program streams to provide music enthusiasts with access to concerts across the globe

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, January 9, 2012 — Audio over IP pioneer Barix AG will bring the 2012 International Piano Festival to a global audience this year through the power of streaming media.

The International Piano Festival is a series of weekly piano concerts taking place from March 3 through April 7, 2012 at the historic 400-seat Teatro Miela in Trieste, Italy. The Association ‘Il Concerto, founded in 2007 to spread knowledge and love for music, hosts the annual event. Featured performers this year include internationally-known musicians Anna Fedorova, Natalia Morozova, Marcos Madrigal, Roberto Prosseda, Trio Maurice and the duo Chiara Soave-Cecilia Baccolo.

Barix will provide a complete Audio over IP solution to support the live audio streams originating from the theater. Listeners can access the streams at home or on the go at http://www.ilconcerto.eu/Il_Concerto/Live.html using desktop computers, smart phones, tablets and other web-accessible devices with audio reception.

The Association ‘Il Concerto cites broadcast-quality sound, flexibility and ease of use as key reasons for choosing Barix.

“Barix makes broadcasting applications dramatically simple,” said Riccardo Radivo, artistic director of the International Piano Festival. “In addition to supporting live streams in the theater, the Barix Audio over IP solution will enable listeners everywhere to hear the concerts on desktop computers, smart phones and other audio devices, expanding the vistas of the Association’s knowledge and love of music.”

The International Piano Festival audio feeds will originate from a front of house mixer in the theater. A Baix Exstreamer 1000 professional Audio over IP device will receive a balanced stereo signal from a mixer output, and encode the audio for distribution over a high-speed broadband connection. (A second stereo output from each mixer will connect to a digital recorder for live recording.)

Barix Instreamer firmware will encode the analog audio signals in the MPEG1 Layer III 48Khz format — the highest bit rate allowed for maximum audio quality. The broadband connection will transport the digital encoded signals to a remote Icecast server, which enables the live stream over fixed and mobile devices.

Have you ever lost food due to a broken fridge or freezer, or did you ever find a door not shut on your kitchen fridge – after one day ?

Worst, of course, if these things happen in a place you do not regulary stay, such as a weekend cottage or vacation home !

I did this even better …. unplugged the freezer because i needed the power outlet to recharge the car battery .. then forgot to plug back in the freezer …. result, after 5 days …. quite a loss of food ! And a mess to clean up …

Barix Barionet devices can come to the rescue here ! If done right, you can monitor the fridge or freezer for both breakdown as well as open doors etc, without doing any modification or adding sensors to the fridge.

Here’s the secret: get a current sensor such as the RIBXKTF from Functional Devices (costs around $15 if you search online). you will need to install it, best in the electrical cabinet, so the source power for the fridge runs through it. The output of this specific type resembles a “contact closure” (it’s probably a transistor), so you can connect, depending on the type of Barionet you use, up to 4 or even up to 8 of these sensors.

The sensor will not detect the usual “standby” current of a fridge (while the compressor not being active), but it will definitely transmit “on” when the compressor runs.

A fridge/freezer should not be active all the time, there should be alternating periods when the compressor is active and inactive.

A typical graph is here:

Freezer Activity Example

By monitoring the sensor for activity, you can now derive quite some information about your fridge !

- constant “off” tells you the fridge is probably plugged out, switched off or fuse blown, compressor dead etc
- constant “on” tells you the fridge is using a lot of energy, probably because the door is not shut correctly or ice buildup

By calculating the duty cycle (percentage of the fridge being on in a certain period) over time, you can even detect growing inefficiency, when a de-icing makes sense etc – of course, the “nominal” values vary by fridge and average load and need to be determined.

Calculation and alarming can be programmed right into the Barionet or done in a higher level home automation system (such as XTension for the mac – i’m using that myself).

One time rotten food/loss of content can easily cost more than the “Barionet freezer monitor”, if you already use Barionets in your house, just add the sensor …. and of course, this functionality can also be applied to heaters, fans, pumps – about anything which is meant to be on “some times” but not always …

If you want a programming example for the Barionet, contact me – happy to provide that to you as source code.

Home automation that makes sense – with the Barionet, the real-world I/O interface from Barix !

All the best,

Johannes

A Barionet is a great product to monitor environmental parameters, power useage, contact closures etc.

If the Barionet detects an alarm condition, it will need to notify you. But how?

Sample code for sending email, operating a SMS modem etc is already available from us.

Here is a very nice method to do this via the popular iPhone by using an application called “prowl”. The Prowl makers operate a public server and manage the delivery to the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch “prowl” app via the standard iOS notification scheme (so, very little consumption of power/bandwith on the iOS device).
You need to purchase the prowl app from the app store ($2.99), register and generate an API key on the prowlapp website, and you are good to go!

On the Barionet, you will need a small application which
- opens a TCP connection to the prowl api server, api.prowlapp.com, port 80 (http)
- sends an “add” command with a meaningful notification message to the server (see example below)
- close the connection.

That’s it!
The alarm message will arrive within very short time at your iPhone, where you can configure quiet times, alarm tones etc.

here is an example for a string you would need to send (replace the xxxxx… with the API code you get from the website):

“GET /publicapi/add?apikey=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&event=alarm%20temp%3e65F%20too%20high&application=fridge HTTP/1.0″ (plus 2x CR/LF)

Note: you will need to do the URL encoding (%20 for space etc) in your program if your message contains blanks or special characters.

We can provide a sample BCL program on request.

Johannes

P.S: Once you have implemented this, let us know so we can feature your application!