Wiring the station in and rolling it out to staff

1How it fits together

The Emergency Station is an iPad plugged into your PA amplifier's line input, the same way any audio source connects. It runs the Emergency Station app and stays on the site Wi-Fi. Staff phones run Emergency Remote, find the station over Wi-Fi, and talk to it directly. Nothing is installed on the amplifier, no server is added, and no internet connection is required for any alarm.

Where the iPad lives: with the amplifier, or in the office if the amplifier is nearby. Once installed it is controlled from staff phones and the office; nobody needs to touch it in an emergency.

2Hardware checklist

3Connecting the iPad, by model

4The amplifier side

Most school PA amplifiers are either a mixer-amplifier with several inputs on the front or rear, or a 100V line amplifier feeding ceiling and horn speakers. Both have a line-level input; that is where the iPad goes.

• Input to use: AUX, LINE, CD, TAPE or TUNER. Any line-level input. Do not use a MIC input: it will be far too sensitive and distort.
• Connector: usually RCA (red/white) or a 3.5 mm socket; sometimes a Phoenix/Euroblock terminal on installed amplifiers. A 3.5 mm-to-RCA lead covers most cases; for Euroblock, a 3.5 mm-to-bare-wire lead with tip to signal, sleeve to ground (use one channel, or sum L+R through two 1 kΩ resistors).
• Priority / mute inputs: some amplifiers have a priority input that mutes everything else when it sees signal. If the amplifier has one, put the station on it so an alarm always wins over background music from any other source. Otherwise, make sure the station's input is not one that gets ducked by a microphone.
• Zone systems: if the amplifier has zone selection, set the station's input to all zones. An emergency announcement that only reaches half the site is worse than none.

5Setting the levels

1. On the iPad, set the volume to about 80% and leave it there. (Settings → Sounds. The station app also asks iPadOS to keep the level up.)
2. Turn the amplifier's input gain for that channel right down, then open Settings in the station app and tap Play PA test announcement.
3. Bring the gain up until the spoken announcement is clearly louder than the normal bell or music level. An emergency announcement should be unmistakable in a noisy classroom, but not distorting.
4. Check a far speaker and a nearby one. Horn speakers outside should carry the announcement to the oval and car park.
5. Note the gain position on the amplifier with a marker so it can't be "helpfully" turned down later.

6Wi-Fi requirements — the part that matters

Alarms travel over the site Wi-Fi from a phone to the station and back out to every phone. For an emergency system this link has to be boringly reliable. Three things to check with whoever runs the network:

• Same network for iPad and phones. The station and the staff phones must be on the same Wi-Fi network (or on VLANs that route to each other). A guest network that isolates clients from each other will not work.
• Bonjour / mDNS allowed. Phones find the station by Bonjour (_lockdownpa._tcp). Most school Wi-Fi allows it on the staff network. If the phone says Finding station… forever, ask IT to allow mDNS on the staff SSID, or give the station a fixed IP and enter it in the phone app's Settings → Connect by address.
• Client isolation off on the staff SSID, and TCP port 8763 open between phones and the iPad. That is the only port used.
• Reserve the iPad's IP address on the DHCP server (a static lease) so the manual-address fallback in the phone app always points at the right place.
• Coverage where staff actually are: the oval, the car park, the far end of the yard. A phone with no Wi-Fi at the time of an alarm can still raise it: the app queues the alarm and sends the moment it reconnects. On iPhone, phones that are off the Wi-Fi also receive alarms by push notification over mobile data.

7Sharing an iPad with a bell scheduler

The station is designed to run in the background on the same iPad as an iPad bell app. Install both, open the station once, then switch to the bell app and leave it in front. The station keeps its listener running and takes over the PA and the screen when an alarm comes in.

• After any restart or iPadOS update, tap the Emergency Station icon once. iPadOS never relaunches an app on its own after a reboot.
• Do not swipe the station out of the app switcher: that stops it. Switching apps is fine; force-quitting is not.
• Both apps play through the same audio lead. An alarm plays at full level regardless of what the bell app is doing.

8Making it permanent

1. Auto-Lock off: iPad Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. The station keeps the screen awake while it is in front, but this covers the bell-app-in-front case too.
2. Always on power. Use the wall charger, not a computer USB port.
3. Set an Admin PIN in the station's Settings so nobody near the iPad can clear a real alarm or change settings.
4. Guided Access (iPad Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access) if the station is the only app on the iPad: triple-click the top button in the app and tap Start. It can then never be closed by accident. Skip this if a bell app shares the iPad.
5. Managed iPads: if the school uses MDM, Single App Mode or an allow-list that includes both apps does the same job.
6. Turn off automatic iPadOS updates (Settings → General → Software Update → Automatic Updates) so the iPad doesn't reboot itself overnight and sit at the lock screen. Update it deliberately in the holidays and tap the icon afterwards.

9Rolling out staff phones

Emergency Remote is free on the App Store and Google Play. Each phone registers with the station once. The office approves it (or turns on auto-approve for rollout day) and stars the people who should be admins.

1. On the station: Settings → Auto-approve new phones ON for the rollout session. Turn it OFF afterwards.
2. Open Settings → Register a Phone (QR code) on the station. Staff point their phone camera at it and tap the link; the app opens already pointed at your station. (No QR? Opening the app on the site Wi-Fi finds the station on its own.)
3. Each staff member enters their name, usual room and role, taps Register Device, and says Allow to every permission: notifications and Critical Alerts, location, and on Android, Do Not Disturb access and battery "Unrestricted".
4. They check the Home tab: the Critical alerts card must read On.
5. On the station's Devices tab, star the admins: the principal, deputies, the office, first-aid officers. Admins can send All Clear, staff notices and PA announcements from their phones.

10Commissioning drill

Before signing off, run a full drill with Drill mode switched on in the station's Settings. Every announcement is prefixed "This is a drill", phones show a drill badge and the history is flagged, but everything else runs for real.

• A phone on silent and Do Not Disturb, locked in a drawer, sounds when a Medical test alert is sent from the station's Devices tab.
• Lockdown raised from a phone in the furthest classroom reaches the PA within two seconds and is heard on every speaker, including outside.
• The station shows who raised it and the map position; every other phone shows the alarm screen.
• An update typed on a phone ("Library, north door") appears on the station and all phones, and is not announced over the PA during a lockdown.
• Silent Mode alarm: no PA audio, phones and station notified, then Escalate to PA works.
• A Medical alarm raised during the lockdown is refused with "logged, not announced".
• All Clear from an admin phone stops the PA and plays the stand-down; the History tab shows the entry with who cleared it.
• Switch to the bell app, leave the station in the background, repeat one alarm.
• Power-cycle the iPad, tap the icon, confirm phones reconnect on their own.
• Drill mode OFF. Auto-approve OFF. Admin PIN set. Gain marked. Done.

11Troubleshooting

Still stuck? Email austech.online.tech@gmail.com with a photo of the amplifier's rear panel and what the phone shows.