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

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

Barix has published a collection of test tones and test files, available for free download for everyone, on the website.

http://www.barix.com/downloads/Tools_and_Accessories/1791/

These are intended for testing purposes in the IP Audio and IP Intercom applications, and sampled/generated in high quality. A wide choice of sample rates and codecs is available.

Please share with whoever may be interested.

Johannes

Instore Radio – shopping radio – elevator music ?

Certainly not !

Well programmed content is not percieved annoying, but rather giving the right feeling and grove in a store, mall or in shopping heaven.

This can be achieved with video much better – yes or no ?

Well … talk to the consumer. Look at human nature. When you go shopping (at least groceries), you typically have a plan, you know what you want. You may even be under time pressure.

How do you react if you get distracted .. by your friend who wants to convince you to drink a coffee with you, or – by some video in a store forcing itself into your mind ?

Let’s face it. We – at least males … according to the cavemen 🙂 – can only focus on one thing. One MAIN thing …

Have you ever tried to listen to radio and work at the same time ? Yes ? Chances are high it worked for you, you even can gain focus and energy – and occasional ads, news etc don’t harm too much. But guess what – even not feeling defocused, you can remember what was spoken about.

Now – try the same thing with video — have you ever tried to watch TV while working ? If so – i almost bet it does not work out for you, unless the work is very mechanic and does not need your head (ironing for example).

A video wall in the fashion store, making lots of light and noise and pulling in the crowd from the street to purchase that jeans they see moving on the screen – that may actually work well. But in most stores, customers are already inside with a plan – a shopping list, and the idea to get things done quickly.

Audio – Shopping Radio – can help to get things done more quickly by having a positive influence on the mind, and well placed ads in the programming can trigger the right thoughts with the shoppers. Without them being distracted, annoyed or feeling hijacked.

Some scientist may figure out why that is the case. For me it is logical. While being on the hunt or in front of our cave – in earlier times – we were able to focus on prey or a task and still chat, talk, listen to the kids in the vicinity etc. That capability has not been lost … instore audio uses it !

Barix IP Audio devices stream shopping radio into thousands of stores every day, worldwide. They have been installed for a reason – low power, reliable, providing excellent audio quality and all that at a low price – no satellite dish on the roof, no media to be shipped. Instore radio over the internet or the company VPN is affordable, proven – and available from Barix.

Johannes

Visit the Barix Booth at the Digital Signage Expo, Feb. 24-26, 2009, Las Vegas Convention Center

Have you ever wished you could listen to Internet Radio in your car, send a live audio feed from anywhere to your studio, or have a mobile paging/intercom station for your Barix based campus emergency paging system ?

Well, this is now all possible and actually quite easy to achieve. The little gadget you need is called a “wireless access router or “3G Wireless router” or similar. Such devices are made by various manufacturers, and they typically allow you to connect Ethernet or Wireless, IP based devices to the internet via a mobile broadband connection.

Achievable data rates of course vary, depending on the technology, provider used, contract etc. Barix Audio devices support, depending on the model, various Audio Codecs, and with a modern 3G or 3.5G network connection, which you now get in many cities and areas of Europe, you can perfectly stream CD quality, stereo audio to a studio.
The typical CDMA or EVDO based networks, common in the US, are quite a bit slower (similar to EDGE in Europe, which you get almost everywhere now), but even these are quite suitable for audio streaming.

You can find a bit more information and one device suggestion on our wiki.

If you have an application where you need to deliver an RTP stream to multiple devices and your network infrastructure or source does not support Multicast, the Barix RTP replicator software may be the right thing for you.
Intended for Barix Audio over IP solutions, but useable with about any device or application or data, this software runs on either a Barionet or an Annuncicom, receives audio on a socket, and distributes the RTP packets to a list of up to 100 destination address/port numbers. You can also send to broadcast or multicast addresses.

Run on the Barionet, the application can easily forward a 100kbps IP Audio stream at 30-50 blocks per second to more than 100 destinations, with a delay of less than 20ms ! Using Barix hardware for this purpose has a lot of benefits: PC-Free technology, well below 4W power consumption, no moving parts, no themral issues, operational within 5 seconds of power up.

Customers of Barix use that solution since years to generate thousands of RTP streams to distribute IP Audio streams in real time.

.. and if you need to broadcast RTP in a “remote” network, the solution can be used as well … just configure only one target, the broadcast address, install the device in the remote location, and stream RTP to its receiving port. The RTP stream will be rebroadcasted in the destination network (multicast supported too, of course).

Questions ? Contact us !
Johannes

Barix devices can be perfectly used for IP intercom and emergency call post purposes. Our free ICGraph application (download from the website) can serve well for a PC based central solution, and we also offer a hardware console now (made by our OEM, MS Neumann Elektronik, who builds fully certified evacuation and industrial/oil and gas intercom systems using our IPAM IP Audio module).

However, what do you do if you need to handle potentially hundreds or thousands of call stations ?

Well – our SIP firmware comes to the rescue ! It can be used on all our IP Audio devices and makes them compliant to the standard SIP functionality – but with a twist: the source code is open, so you can add special behavior to the devices (and we can also do for you !)

As the central management software/solution, you can use any SIP based PBX, such as (free) Asterisk. You can typically configure hunt groups, queues, nighttime calling plans etc in a PBX easily, and use standard IP phones as consoles. Why re-invent the wheel if this is all available?

Of course, you can monitor the whole system independently from the PBX, add emergency capabilities (“all call” without the use of the PBX), background music etc.

We are happy to help planning such a solution – applications are numerous, being it an IP based nurse call system, highway emergency call boxes, a PA and intercom system for public transport … or an IP Audio entertainment and communications system for a cruise ship.

Johannes