New Bell System utilised at Millfield School

Millfield School was founded in 1935 and is one of the UK’s leading co-educational independent schools with over 1700 pupils and 600 staff. We have been supporting the school’s digital vision through a range of innovative and bespoke AV education solutions for over five years.

Our brief was to provide an innovative and future proof IP based Bell and Alert solution, whilst addressing the day to day scheduling requirements for the schools’ class and special event bells.

Following a review of the school’s current bell system and communication procedures, IVC was invited to propose an economic and reliable IP based Bell and Alert solution. The system needed to be future proof and scalable. Equally important was the fact that the user interfaces needed to be intuitive and effective in providing clear and concise communication to students, staff and visitors across the campus.

The IP based system that we installed is based around AcroVista’s Bell Commander software which is a tried and tested platform used by hundreds of educational enterprises and businesses across the globe.

As well as supporting relays, IP and serial protocols, the software features scheduled audio, paging, emergency notifications and a day scheduler – with the capacity to schedule hundreds of events per day. Other attractions included the low TCO and comprehensive wide-ranging support of open VOIP standards and its compatibility with Windows PCs, MACs, audio IP devices and SIP compliant phones.

This along with the distribution of PA announcements, messaging and alerts, globally or to individual zones and devices creates a versatile platform for many applications.

For the initial phase of work, we selected high quality IP audio decoders and paging stations. Designed in Switzerland and already installed in tens of thousands of locations worldwide, the Barix Decoder series is the established standard for professional commercial and Broadcast applications alike. At Millfield the decoders have been integrated with the Bell Commander software, providing the school with a reliable and feature rich means of audio communication and control across the main school.

Martin Case, AV Manager at Millfield School comments; “I was pleased IVC and their team were able to assist us in bringing our School bell and communication system up to date with IP related devices. This was a bespoke project by IVC because there are many speakers both inside and outside of the buildings here at Millfield. We are now able to reach around the entire campus whereas before we were limited due to the small cable related system we had in place. We look forward to working with IVC in the future on many more projects that may arise.”