Minnesota St. Louis County School District
A Mass Notification and Emergency Communication supplement to the February issues of Systems Contractor News and Sound & Video Contractor contained an article on the CastNET EVN installation in Minnesota St. Louis county schools. The complete article can be found here. Below are some excerpts:
This is a story about the intersection of a public address/voice evacuation system (Bosch Praesideo) and a digital signage system (Alpha Video CastNET). It’s an instructive look at a real-world situation in which mass notification/emergency communications and digital signage work together. The result is both a new technical product, as well as a new installation paradigm for a sprawling five-school county in northern Minnesota.
What is important—and interesting—about this particular story is the unique way in which the system integrates Bosch’s Praesideo paging system with Alpha Video’s digital signage system CastNET. The result gives Minnesota’s five St. Louis County schools an integrated emergency communication system—one that with a single point of control feeds audio and video messages directly into the halls and classrooms, effectively “taking over” the hallway displays and classroom projectors for emergency communication through an applet that resides on the teacher’s workstations.
So in addition to having a digital signage and PA system that serves an everyday role, that same system becomes one of the most effective school alert systems in the country. In the event of severe weather, fires, and potential criminal activity, the system can be activated from a single point—a fire alarm or the command central, or any classroom. Monitors in the hallways visually show what the alert is, a voice message is broadcast through the paging system, and an interactive touchboard in every classroom displays the alert, which overrides the current content.
The system can also be used for non-emergency content, providing for communication and shared programming in a district where the five schools are up to 80 miles away from each other