Analog input to multicast paging

[rlsabin]

Is anyone aware of an adapter that would allow you to use an analog audio signal and convert it to multicast paging. We have a remote classroom environment with a half a dozen Yealink T22P phones and the multicast paging feature works great. What the customer would like to do is be able to interface an inexpensive time based tone generator to signal the beginning and end of class. They do not have overhead paging in place so they would like to make these tone announcements through the Yealink phones via the multicast page feature. I have been unsuccessful in searching the interwebs for such a device so I thought I would see if anyone else has run across one in their adventures.


Rick

[James_Yealink]

Hi Rlsabin,

Sorry we are don't quite aware of such a device.

So at the begin and end of class customer will make a multicast paging and play a tone? How the tone is played?
Who make the multicat paging? Is there a specific person doing the operation?

Regards,
James

[jolouis]

We just developed a device that does exactly what you describe for a school board customer of ours. The problem they had was that they needed to keep their existing analog paging infrastructure, but wanted to add IP Multicast paging to the mix to allow them to gradually migrate away from speakers in the classrooms (and just leave speakers in the hallways, with phones in the room).

If you are talking strictly for class change/tones then there are probably more straight forward options. i.e. something like BellCommander:
http://www.acrovista.com/bellcommander/sip-version.html
Which is a program that lets you schedule the tones and have them sent from a PC to the SIP phones directly. I've never used it and have no idea at costing, but it might be reasonable if you have a computer lying around on site to install it onto.

For our customer because they wanted more than just tones (the existing analog system is used for paging, tones, music playback, emergency announcements, etc) an interface made more sense than software, so the cost is justified (our unit is approx. $300.00)

[rlsabin]

Thank you for your response Jo. I will investigate further.

[kahaen]

Do you still sell the device you made for this customer?? We would be interested.