AtlasIED Rings a Bell for HACH
POLAR supplies AtlasIED Atmosphere for Excite AV audio project at Harris Academy Chafford Hundred…
Harris Academy Chafford Hundred (HACH) is a co-educational secondary school and sixth-form that welcomes nearly 1500 students through its doors every day. Located in the Essex town of Grays, the Academy achieves outstanding results year after year through a combination of strong academic teaching and learning, excellent pastoral care and personal development programmes. An award-winning institution, HACH works tirelessly to ensure that every detail of its provision is geared towards meeting its ambition of being ‘a school for the future’.
A key area of focus for the Academy’s management team is the maintenance of clear communications within its corridors and communal spaces. The school ‘bell’ is fundamental to the smooth operation of the timetable, with HACH placing strong emphasis on punctuality to ensure that students take maximum advantage of teaching time. With this in mind, the HACH team engaged AV solutions provider Excite AV of Bishops Stortford to install a system which offered intuitive head-end control and optimal loudspeaker placement, in order to ensure the timely movement of students around the school. With more than 50 years of combined experience, Excite AV is a preferred supplier of the Harris Federation which runs 52 primary and secondary academies across London and Essex.
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The control element of the system was supplied by POLAR following discussions between Excite’s project lead Gareth Thomas and POLAR Integrated Solutions’ Mark Bracken. Mark recommended that the requirement for a multi zone audio processor with a built-in bell scheduler would be best met by the AtlasIED Atmosphere AZM4. The unit is a 4-Zone audio processor with powerful DSP combined with innovative algorithms, which offers custom solutions for a wide variety of spaces. POLAR’s Mark Bracken arranged a demonstration of the system at Excite’s head office and followed up with online training for its installation team. POLAR’s service and support team were on hand during the installation to assist with any issues arising.
More on atlasied ATMOSPHEREMark Bracken comments:
“The Atmosphere is a real processing powerhouse for hospitality, retail and education environments - in fact anywhere where automated audio system control is essential. The bell scheduler is just one of its wide range of features, and programming is made simple through a modern on-board web interface, which has been optimised around common use cases.”
Excite AV’s Operations Director Gareth Thomas adds:
“We’ve now worked on projects for nine of the Harris Federation’s sites and the response we’ve had from all of them has been very positive.
Working alongside Mark from POLAR was fantastic. He spent a fair amount of time with us working on the right solution for HACH and we feel that the AtlasIED Atmosphere unit is the perfect fit for the bell/audio system - the timing schedules are great, it works seamlessly and does the job to a very high standard.
We’ll certainly be specifying the Atlas product for future projects.”
HACH Head of Maintenance, Samantha Rolfe, expressed great satisfaction with the outcome:
“I can’t recommend Excite AV enough,” says Samantha, “their professionalism and delivery of the project has been second to none. We’ve had a great response to the new system from the students - it’s been a very successful addition to the Academy.”
PRODUCT USED:
AtlasIED Atmosphere AZM4 4-Zone Audio Processor
The Atmosphere AZM4 is an 4-zone audio processor and the heart of an Atmosphere audio control system. Powerful DSP combined with innovative algorithms offer custom solutions for a wide variety of spaces. A built-in message player, virtual wall controllers, learning ambient noise sensing, Tilter Filter™, auto-gain, GPIO, scheduler, and many more features, make the AZM a processing powerhouse.
The AZM4 is compatible with all six of the Atmosphere accessories for control, remote audio input, and ambient noise sensing. Up to 16 of these plug-and-play Accessories can be connected across 2 accessory ports on the AZM4, with each port designed to work reliably up to 1000ft.
Programming is simple through a modern on-board web interface, optimized around common use-cases. Built around Progressive Web App technology, the control interface is device agnostic, responsive, and meticulously designed for an ideal user experience without sacrificing design freedom. In addition to Ethernet, built-in Wi-Fi allows for tablets and other controlling devices to connect directly to the AZM4.