Barix products are now live in the campus' Life Center, a sports, recreational and fitness centre that opened this spring; Life Center Academy, a private, non-denominational K-12 school; WIFI-AM, a 500-watt Christian radio station; and the worship sanctuary, chapel and 2200-seat auditorium in the main Fountain of Life Center building.
According to Thomas Spadaro, director of technical ministries for Fountain of Life Center, the majority of the technology on campus is funded through donations, and the low cost of the Barix devices are ideal for his budget. Spadaro added that open-standards technology from companies like Barix allow him to develop custom software applications with three main goals in mind: cost-efficiency, enhanced control capabilities, and system interoperability. The low power consumption of the Barix devices exemplifies the Fountain of Life Center's green initiatives to minimize heating, electrical and other energy-related costs.
"The Barionets replaced older, less efficient heating control systems that fell into disrepair and became expensive to maintain," said Spadaro. "No central computer is required to operate the Barionets, and if the IP backbone goes down, the standalone, built-in features will automatically kick into gear so the Barionets can operate autonomously."
The Life Center Academy uses the Barix range of Annuncicom IP intercom technology with the BellCommader scheduling system from AcroVista software to provide point-to-multipoint audio communications to 22 classrooms from the central office.
The campus is also using a Barix Instreamer audio encoder to stream live programming from WIFI-AM over the internet, and also has several Instreamers and Exstreamer audio decoders to transport audio to different rooms and buildings on campus.
(Jim Evans)
