[K12OSN] Linux Bell system

[Jim Kronebusch]

I saw the post last week about using linux for a school bell system.  My main
school uses 14 different bell schedules which has always been a nightmare. 
The bell system in place only handles 4 so on the other schedules there have
been no bells and teachers/students just have to be mindful of the clock. 
Also the bell  system needs to be set every day manually (this sucks).

So this prompted some thought on my part.  I now have a bell system from a
linux box that I can program for months ahead of time and automatically
switches my schedules daily.  I can also do unlimited bell tones.  For example
the first tone of the day can announce the schedule for that day, or I can
swap tones for holidays and such.  This is awesome.  If anyone would like
examples of the scripts for this let me know.  Basically I did a minimal
install of FC4 on a desktop machine with a sound card.  I hooked the sound
card to the current receiver that played the old bell system.  The set up a
series of cron files for the root user, one for each bell schedule.  Then I
set up a series of scripts that will cycle out the current cron script for
root with one for the current bell schedule.  I program the cron cycle scripts
ahead of time with webmins task scheduler.  So under /var/spool/cron/ I have a
series of files named root.schedulename.  Each of these files have a listing
of the times for every bell chime.  Then under /root I have a series of files
named with "schedulename".  These files are executable scripts that simply
move /var/spool/cron/root.schedulename to /var/spool/cron/root.  Under /root I
have bell.wav.  I can swap bell.wav with any wav file for the bell sound.  I
call on bell.wav at the specific times with the command "play /root/bell.wav".

This is cool.  Thanks for the ideas everyone!

I now have the next 2 months of bells scheduled, and I can fully control them
from home if I need to with webmin!

Jim Kronebusch
Cotter Tech Department
507-453-5188


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