Scheduled Alarms

[jfester]

Hello everyone,

My school is having issues with our school bell and I was asked if we are able to use the telephones in any way to schedule alarms to sound as a school bell. I looked through the configuration and did not anticipate finding anything, but figured I would be a little more diligent and ask if there was a way to do this. Does anyone know of a way to schedule daily alarms that would play some audio file at certain intervals during each day? By the way, Friday is an early release day, so the schedule would be unique for it. Also, Saturday & Sunday they cannot sound as we have events here on the weekends we do not wish to interrupt.

Thank you for any advice you can provide!

 

[Evolute IT]

The CFD with a dialer can do that easily.

 

[VoIPTools]

I encourage you to take a look at our 3CX Audio Scheduler tool. This, along with our 3CX Emergency Notifier tool, are "must have" solutions for school systems.

 

[jfester]

Thank you ConceptsWeb. The one thing I noticed about CFD is that it requires a Pro license and we have a Basic license. I could check on the cost to upgrade but would be for this feature only.

VoIPTools, I appreciate you posting that. What I thought about in the past few minutes is how poorly it would work using the telephones. 1) any student in hallways, the gym, auditoriums, playgrounds, etc., would never hear the alarm and theoretical "bell system" which makes it quite pointless. 2) anyone on a call or using the phone would not hear the alarm sound. and 3) students are loud...much louder than telephone speakers are and would not hear the alarm in some situations.

I think we will need to go in a different direction for this solution. Thank you both for your help!

 

[Alphabetic]

Thank you ConceptsWeb. The one thing I noticed about CFD is that it requires a Pro license and we have a Basic license. I could check on the cost to upgrade but would be for this feature only.

VoIPTools, I appreciate you posting that. What I thought about in the past few minutes is how poorly it would work using the telephones. 1) any student in hallways, the gym, auditoriums, playgrounds, etc., would never hear the alarm and theoretical "bell system" which makes it quite pointless. 2) anyone on a call or using the phone would not hear the alarm sound. and 3) students are loud...much louder than telephone speakers are and would not hear the alarm in some situations.

I think we will need to go in a different direction for this solution. Thank you both for your help!

Get some Fanvil PA speakers or a PA2 to intergrate existing bells in to the SIP system.

 

[jfester]

Get some Fanvil PA speakers or a PA2 to intergrate existing bells in to the SIP system.

hmmmm interesting! Thank you for mentioning this! I am adding a few Fanvil phones for the new campus. I was not familiar with this equipment, the PA system. The one thing I need to check with them is distance. We have 3 buildings at one campus separated by 50 feet of outdoors walkways, no covering, there are no pipes between buildings to run the cable through. So would likely need to get something installed underground for the cables.

There is a company I've been talking to that has wireless PA systems & bell systems, all-in-one and they work off RF. This is excellent in some situations where all you have is power, and would help in our case also. It's not cheap though.

 

[VoIPTools]

It all depends on how you hook up the "bells". You can leverage the overhead paging system, or use PA1 or PA2 devices. I assume there is a relay that tells the bells to ring. Someone smarter than me may be able to suggest a way to use an analog gateway to open the relays? I'm confident we can find a way to use some of the existing infrastructure.