Our investment in Q-SYS, and the Q-SYS team’s investment in The Farm, reflects a remarkable harmony between our organization. To appreciate the fruitfulness of our relationship, consider the following:
- The Farm is 100% Q-SYS focused.
- We’re involved in the entire buying cycle, providing end-to-end services, from conceptual engineering to programming and commissioning.
- We offer Day 2 technical support as well.
- The Farm offers Q-SYS Level 2 Training. What’s more, we also provide in-person Jumpstart Trainings for technicians and commissioning engineers, sales and design engineers, and DSP and control programmers across their areas of specialization.
- And here’s a big one: We do plugin/application development for Q-SYS, too.
The Farm’s participation in the Q-SYS Developer Partner Program
Only a handful of companies develop plugins as part of the Q-SYS Developer Partner Program. That alone is testimony to the degree of trust we’ve earned with Q-SYS. That trust was extended when The Farm was invited to participate in the Q-SYS developer beta testing for entry into the program.
Thus far, we’ve created two well-received Q-SYS plugins:
FarmTTS – THE FARM TEXT-TO-SPEECH PLUG-IN
The converted text can either be entered during the programming phase and triggered for conversion in runtime – this is ideal for fixed announcements – or the text string can be dynamically generated and converted as a dynamic announcement.
Using Google’s DeepMind AI technology, the FarmTTS plugin configuration enables users to select between several different male or female voices, adjust the speed of speech, and alter the pitch. Applications include conference room greetings, emergency evacuation announcements, courtesy announcements, transportation arrival/departure announcements, audible status reports, and more. FarmTTS frees users from having to record and edit audio clips, upload them to the Q-SYS Core, and maintain them there.
FarmWAN – THE FARM WEATHER ALERT NOTIFIER
This is a potential lifesaver, originally developed for an education client to not only mute the AV system in the event of an emergency, but to also provide early information regarding the details of the weather alert. FarmWAN scans the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather database every minute for active alerts that apply to the provided coordinates and compares the parameters of the alert to the configuration to determine if an alert should be triggered.
Standard parameter filters such as Urgency, Severity and Certainty, as well as Response Type, are programmable to suit each deployment. “Must Include” and “Must Exclude” keywords can also be specified to meet a broad range of application requirements.
Applications for FarmWAN include weather-based notifications for touch panels/digital signage and the automation of an AV system based on emergency weather events. Paired with FarmTTS Text-to-Speech plugin, FarmWAN can provide audible weather alert notifications – ideal for emergency public safety services like fire stations, EMTs, police departments, as well as schools, hospitals and more.
We’re leveraging the Internet and writing applications that take all relevant information and bring it to a localized system in a useful application. And this doesn’t just apply to weather alerts. If you wanted to bring in sports scores, lotto numbers, traffic information, or other feeds, The Farm can write a script that finds the pertinent data, parses it, and then brings it to your localized AV system.
If you have any need that crops up, or if we can provide more information for you, don’t hesitate to contact us. You can also follow me over on Q-SYS Communities for Developers.