1. Written before: Why does the airport need this kind of "talking" small speaker?
To be honest, people who come into contact with the airport public address system for the first time may be shocked - in such a large terminal and with so many boarding gates, how can passengers in each area hear accurate information?
Traditional airport public address systems are really powerful, such as the solutions of Shibang and Zenitel, which often cost hundreds of thousands of investment, professional network audio matrix, paging microphone, fire linkage interface... But the problem is -Not all scenarios require such a "heavy" solution.
Imagine these scenarios:
The temporary change of a certain boarding gate requires repeated urging of several "big-hearted" passengers
A passenger went astray in the transit rest area and needs to be directed to find someone.
The luggage of a certain flight has arrived, but the passenger is still checking his phone in the lounge
Even some small and medium-sized airports, VIP lounges, and shuttle bus waiting areas
In these scenarios, what you need is aSimple, flexible, content can be changed at any time, no need to wait for half a day for IT department approvalbroadcast plan.
This is where the Thingboot 15W Smart Voice Wall Speaker comes in handy.
2. First get to know this "little guy"
This speaker model is UNI-YY-YX-BG-15W. To put it bluntly:A speaker that can be connected to the Internet and can be called to speak at any time through the HTTP interface.
Several hard indicators:
Power 15W: The coverage area is about the size of small and medium-sized lounges, waiting areas, and offices. It is not the kind that can cover the entire terminal, but a few in one area are enough.
Connection method: WiFi 2.4G (there is also a wired network version), no gateway required, just plug in the power supply and connect to the network to use it
core competencies: Convert text into voice for broadcasting (this is called TTS, text-to-speech). It supports male and female voices, volume adjustment, speed adjustment, and polyphone correction.
The core advantage is——Open HTTP interface. what does that mean? As long as you have a little bit of programming skills, you can connect it to your existing system.
3. Access steps: from zero to one, step by step
Step 1: Power on the equipment and distribute the network
I won’t go into details here. Thingboot’s small program or App can configure the network. Make a note of it after mixing itDevice ID, usually found on the device case or in the console..
Step 2: Get your API key
Go to Thingboot Open Platform to register and get two key things:
AppID:your application ID
AppSecret: Your application key (don’t reveal it)
These two things determine your permission to call the interface.
Step 3: Understand the signature mechanism (this step is a bit convoluted)
Thingboot's interface security is pretty good. Each request must carry a signature to prevent it from being called randomly by others.
How the signature is calculated:
sign = md5( md5(AppSecret) + ts )
intsis the current timestamp in seconds.
In human words:
First encrypt your AppSecret with MD5
Then spell the timestamp at the end
Then do MD5 of the combined string as a whole
It sounds a bit convoluted, but the code only takes three or four lines to write..
Step 4: Core operation - let the speaker speak
This is the most critical step. The interface address is:
POST https://api.thingboot.com/{AppID}/device/control/?sign={sign}&ts={ts}The request body looks like this:
It's that simple - put in what you want to sayorder, the speaker read out the words obediently..
Step 5 (Advanced): "Settings" of the remote control speaker
In addition to pure broadcasting, you can also adjust parameters remotely:
{"volume":"5"}: Adjust the volume to 5 (0-9){"voice":"1"}: Switch to male voice (0 is female voice){"speed":"5"}:Speech speed 5 (0-9){"tone":"5"}:Tone 5{"ring":"3"}: Play ringtone 3 first, then speak{"stop":"1"}: Shut it up and stop playing
Imagine this scenario: Turn up the volume when there are many people during the day, turn it down on a late-night flight; use an urgent female voice to urge you to board the plane, use a smooth male voice to find lost items... Isn't it quite flexible?
4. Practical combat: How to connect with the airport business system?
Now that we’ve talked about the basic operations, let’s talk about some practical aspects. How does your airport business system call this speaker?
The first scenario: docking with flight information system
This is the most common requirement. In your flight information system, various statuses are stored in the database - which flight has started boarding, which flight has been delayed, which gate has changed.
Docking ideas: Write a monitoring service (or trigger). When the flight status changes, it will automatically splice the broadcast content and call the API to send it to the corresponding speaker.
Pseudocode example:
The second scenario: Connecting to the manual broadcast console
Sometimes manual intervention is still needed, such as finding someone. A simple web console can be made to allow staff to select areas, enter text, and click a button to broadcast.
Docking ideas: Make a simple management page and call the API behind it. You can even use a low-code platform to build one in ten minutes.
The third scenario: docking queuing/waiting system
Some lounges and shuttle bus waiting areas can be connected to the queuing system. For example, "VIP-Guest No. 3, your car is ready" will automatically trigger the announcement.
5. Several easy pitfalls and precautions
Pitfall 1: The device is offline and you think it is online
The HTTP interface returning 200 only means "the platform has received the instruction", but it does not mean that the speaker has actually received it. If the speaker is disconnected from the Internet, the command will be lost.
solution: Thingboot platform has an asynchronous message push mechanism, which can subscribe to the status feedback of the device to confirm whether the execution is successful. If you need strong reliability, remember to access this function.
Pitfall 2: Chinese garbled characters or multi-phonetic characters are mispronounced
For example, "Chongqing" may be pronounced as "zhong qing" instead of "chong qing", and "一行" may be pronounced as "yi hang" instead of "yi xing".
solution: Thingboot supports pinyin subtitles in text, and can also be usedplay:gbk:16With this encoding method, GBK has better support for Chinese.. If that doesn't work, you can replace it with a synonym.
Pit 3: Multiple speakers in the same area "quarrel"
If multiple speakers are placed in an area, and the broadcast is triggered at the same time, the broadcast will be chaotic - speaker A is speaking halfway, and speaker B is also starting to speak, covering each other.
solution
Option 1: Manage multiple speakers as a group, and only select one main speaker to play when triggered.
Option 2: Use Thingboot’s "specify multiple devices" function, but coordinate the broadcast content
Pit 4: Safety considerations
Your AppSecret must not be hard-coded in the client code or exposed to the front end. It should be placed in the back-end service, and the back-end calls the API uniformly.
6. A small Demo: a Java example that can be run through in 10 minutes
If you are using Java, the core code looks like this
The idea in other languages (Python, PHP, Go) is exactly the same, which is to send an HTTP request.
7. Relationship with traditional airport broadcasting systems: not a replacement, but a supplement
One last point:Small speakers like Thingboot are not intended to replace professional airport PA systems, but to do the things that traditional systems can do to "kill mosquitoes with cannons".
The traditional broadcast system is suitable for full-region, high-concurrency, and high-reliability scenarios.. And this small speaker is suitable for:
Temporary, flexible and content-changing broadcasts
Targeted reminder for a specific point
Quick launch without cumbersome procedures
The most ideal solution isCombination of both: The large system is responsible for regular flight status broadcasts, and the small speakers are responsible for various "spontaneous" notifications. You can even write an adaptation layer to encapsulate Thingboot's interface into a protocol compatible with the large system and schedule it uniformly.
Okay, the above is a complete solution for integrating Thingboot 15W API speakers into your own project. To put it bluntly, it’s three steps:Configure the network, calculate signatures, and send requests. All that's left is to use your imagination and see what it can tell you.
If there is anything unclear, the official documentation of Thingboot is quite detailed., you can also go to their open platform to find sample code. Wish you good luck with your connection!