outdoor wireless tannoy system

[bl33dingsaint]

Evening all.

 

 

I have been asked by someone in management in the Local Authority I work for to look in to the possibility or feasibility of having a tannoy system installed in the town. These would preferrably be COMPLETELY wireless.

 

The purpose of these speakers is to play dreadful festive music at Christmas time as this will undoubtedly stop residents from travelling to nearby cities to spend their money in better shops. And also to play "Danny Boy" every day at lunchtime due to this particular town's tedious link to the very famous ditty.

I have told the enquirer that this isn't really feasible at all (and incredibly embarrassing to us unelected, sane people who have to live and work here). Aside from the fact that you'll encounter trouble trying to power these units wirelessly, there'll be issues with landlords permitting speakers to be screwed on to their buildings, public liability should they become a hazard, royalty bills (he reckons there's Rights-Free christmas muzak available

[paulears]

Perfectly doable. Location of the units needs to be thought through, because what you really need is electricity. Each Christmas the council probably find power for the christmas lights - so it's no doubt there.

 

I suspect though, that the stumbling block will be copyright clearance and expense - because it involves broadcasting to large numbers of the public and a few hours a day for a few weeks to thousands of listeners will be serious money. People who do Restricted Service radio broadcasting know how expensive playing music to just a small number of people can be. Second stumbling block will be people who will object to the use citing it as a noise hazard. Which of course it no doubt will be. Plenty of RF solutions available but it's going to be expensive and complicated. If the council are putting in wired christmas lights it will be hugely cheaper to string out 100V cables at the same time.

 

It's an interesting project - but expensive or very expensive!

[Owain]

does the town have an existing CCTV system? Could the camera wiring, whether it's baseband video or DSL, be used to carry the sound downstream?

 

 

 

 

Local council did it here for 1 street - it only lasted one Xmas and got lots of complaints.

 

 

[dbuckley]

Every year a town local to use does this, but with wired speakers; they just put 100V horns at the top of each lamp post in the town and run a wire zig-zag-fashion from pole to pole. It is put up by the local electricity board when they put up the xmas lights.

 

As Paul says; wireless perfectly do-able. One approach might be a temporary low-power FM broadcasting licence and then (a) it makes the tech easy, just a 10W amplifier and a small FM tuner and a horn, (b) it should simplify the music licencings, and (c) you can put the frequency in the local advertising, and then people can tune in!!!!!