In this featured piece by Campus Security Today, the outlet details how Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, Texas, replaced a patchwork of aging analog bell and speaker systems with a unified IP-based communication platform. The project began with the construction of a new middle school building and expanded to cover the school’s upper and lower school buildings, standardizing on AtlasIED IPX series endpoints paired with Singlewire’s InformaCast communications software. The new system registers AtlasIED speakers and displays as endpoints directly within InformaCast, supporting both visual and audio alerts alongside daily bell schedules, announcements, and intercom use. All buildings are now integrated and centrally managed, letting Trinity Christian Academy distribute daily and emergency messages, including weather alerts and lockdown notifications, to individual buildings or the whole campus depending on the message.
Key Takeaways
- Trinity Christian Academy serves more than 1,400 students on a 40-plus acre campus in Addison, Texas.
- The school combined AtlasIED IPX series loudspeakers and displays with Singlewire’s InformaCast communications software to replace disjointed analog bell and speaker systems.
- AtlasIED’s IP-SDM and IP-DDS endpoints register directly within InformaCast, supporting both visual text and audio broadcast for alerts, bell schedules, and announcements.
- IP-to-analog gateways let the new digital endpoints interact with the school’s existing analog systems, including new outdoor horns, without requiring a full replacement.
- All three of Trinity Christian Academy’s buildings are now integrated and centrally managed, allowing daily and emergency messages to be sent to individual buildings or the entire campus.
Original Story
Like many schools, TCA used different technologies and vendor solutions across its lower, middle, and upper schools for bells, clocks and loudspeakers, many of which were analog. There was no central management for all systems. Supporting everything was cumbersome at best…
“Even though some of the loudspeakers on campus weren’t working properly, one of the biggest pain points they had were their old analog clocks,” Burrows said. “Every time there was a time change, or they just weren’t keeping their time correctly, they would have to go out and reset the clocks. So that was very annoying to them.”
Burrows created a solution combining a variety of IPX endpoints from AtlasIED with Singlewire’s InformaCast communications software. Vetted integration technology partners like Singlewire and AtlasIED ensure that interoperability, reliability, and usability have all been verified and confirmed through extensive testing.