As a College of Technology, Swanmore College in Southhampton, England, required a medium for communicating valuable information centrally as well as to their network of local feeder schools. They wanted a solution that was modern, efficient, cost effective and manageable both locally within the individual schools and centrally.
The main considerations were network connectivity between Swanmore College and the 9 feeder schools, including ftp access and proxy servers as well as the ability to control and create layouts for the feeder schools from a central location.
ONELAN was chosen for the ability to setup different zones with different content types, and for stability. An NTB5005P player publishes content to 10 different channels. Nine local NTB615s each subscribe to the appropriate channel. These players are located in nine schools within a 10 mile radius.
There is also an additional NTB615 player in the college library. Each screen displays a basic layout designed by the college which has two zones that the feeder schools can update. The schools have ad-hoc access to these zones. The layouts consist of a media zone, a text zone for school notices, a BBC Newsround RSS feed, the weather, the time, date and the school name and logo.
The ONELAN solution has not only met expectations but exceeded them, the flexible display and simple to use software means content can be updated regularly without excessive investment of time.
"We have found ONELAN a flexible and comprehensive system which allows ad-hoc users to quickly and easily update the screen whilst allowing us to make more complex changes where necessary," said Helen Woodland, community IT technician.
User Comments