Biamp Systems has introduced release 1.2 of Vocia, the US company’s critical paging and life safety system and one of the firm’s newest networked media systems.
Steve Metzger, President of Biamp Systems, said: "We were pleased to see strong demand for Vocia in all the major markets which Biamp serves worldwide. We are also proud of the fact that Vocia was one of the first products ever to obtain EN 54-16 product certification and is approved to work in installations requiring EN 60849 and AS 60849 system certification. Vocia 1.2 adds even greater flexibility when designing a critical paging system, so that our customers can develop and build highly flexible solutions with a rich collection of features and functionality for their very important projects. With this new release, Vocia offers more powerful and flexible design options for integrators, and high value to the end-user."<br> <br>Overview<br><br>Vocia is described as a scalable critical paging and voice evacuation system designed for facilities of all sizes. Employing Biamp’s audio legacy, Vocia incorporates distributed processing, page routing, and networked audio and control — features it’s claimed not often found in typical life safety systems. Vocia’s networked approach eliminates the single point of system failure, allowing for decentralised design and a system that is expandable from a single paging station and amplifier to a more complex paging system across several zones and multiple buildings.<br> <br>Hardware <br> <br>At the forefront of the Vocia 1.2 upgrades is the enhanced Life Safety Interface device (LSI-16e), the emergency interface that communicates between Vocia and emergency and fire alarms. The LSI-16e device expands the number of discrete emergency zones from four to 20, adding 16 additional option inputs and up to 500 virtual inputs, 50 emergency zones, and 10 emergency messages per zone. The LSI-16e software has also been improved, making it possible to trigger a warning message followed by an emergency message and assign up to nine emergency messages and one additional mute to each emergency zone.<br> <br>Vocia 1.2 also includes: an Interface Module card (IM-16) that can be added to the current Life Safety Interface device to expand the number of emergency zones; an Aux Port on each of the paging stations that allows third-party control systems via RS232 connection, provides access to all standard paging control functionalities and allows users to select paging destinations on-the-fly from a visual facilities map; and an EN 54-16 compliant Emergency Wall Station microphone (EWS-10).<br> <br>Software <br><br>Vocia 1.2 offers new notification options in the event of an emergency. With the remote monitoring capabilities, 1.2 can be programmed to notify administrators via email whenever an event triggers an alarm. This feature is the firm says suitable for facility and security managers of multi-campus organisations, or buildings where onsite access is limited. <br> <br>Vocia 1.2 also expands the makers add the abilities of the Vocia Text Protocol (VTP), which allows users to restart specified devices and change zone parameters such as volume, source selection, and mute. The software gives an indication of the current control state (active/inactive).<br> <br>Installations <br><br>“In every region we’ve seen an increase in demand for solutions that provide superior audio quality and are fully compliant with life safety standards,” said Graeme Harrison, Vice President of Biamp’s International Sales. “From the Copenhagen Airport in Demark to the Sydney Olympic Park in Australia, our customers can be confident that our products meet all of the latest standards and will provide unparalleled performance and intelligibility that no other product can match.”
