Interalia's COMMANDER presses the right buttons for London Transport

Integrated, installed and commissioned by IPS Ltd, Interalia’s COMMANDER has already been fitted successfully by the company in 24 London Underground stations including the networks’ largest and most complex stations, Oxford Circus and Bank/Monument. Providing the Underground system with a complete database of over 1200 studio recorded messages, the COMMANDER can also be triggered in large stations where an incident calls for the evacuation of part of the station.

The COMMANDER is the first system of its type to deliver independent audio messages simultaneously to ten or more separate audio channels. It offers analogue or digital control Interfaces to PA controllers including Baldwin Boxall, ASL and Millbank. Messages are stored as .WAV type digital files enabling each message to be visually linked to its associated digitised audio file enabling operators to visually select any number of messages to play.
Messages can be deleted, played at a specific time, on a specific date, repeated any number of times, continuously played, set to delay play or played to any zone(s). Underground operators can even create their own audio messages or user-recordings, storing them in a general message library, or a private operator library on one COMMANDER.

The London Underground’s COMMANDERs also provide foreign language message capability with over 20 general public information messages studio recorded in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. Quick keys can be used to efficiently schedule these messages to play on a particular date, at a specific time, continuously or for a specific number of times. In addition it enables staff to make live broadcasts when needed, or to record their own messages for future broadcast. Each COMMANDER can deliver up to 10 different messages at the same time to different zones on the station.

The London Underground COMMANDERs are integrated with the IBISS and ASCOM NIS 2000 Help Point Systems and the London A to Z. Should the operator be scheduling a message on the COMMANDER screen when a Help Point call is received, the COMMANDER immediately switches to the HelpPoint software. In a similar fashion, a single button click enables operators to access the London A to Z for address and route information, then return easily to the COMMANDER.

In addition to the COMMANDER, London Underground uses two other Interalia solutions in their network; the Transit Voice and the Help Point System.