Poolside Paging Built from the Phones and Speakers Already in the House

A residential music system can be turned into a house-wide announcement system affordably, using standard phone-system (EPABX) or intercom hardware. In this Bangalore home we did it with the speakers already installed around the swimming pool.

The home and the brief

The home is a five-storey, 15,000 sqft residence, home to a large family that includes four children. Introduced by the home's architect, we were brought in to plan the automation for the new house. The homeowner wanted a comprehensive system: energy-saving lighting, mood lighting and lighting scenes, smart pool heating, motorised curtains for sunlight control, full-property Wi-Fi, multi-room audio, an invisible biometric lock for a 15-foot door, and automated gardening.

A gap nobody had planned for

During handover, as the family was moving in, they realised the house had no good way to reach people at the swimming pool from the rest of the home. The kitchen is several floors above the pool deck. Shouting doesn't carry that far, and an ordinary telephone ring can't be heard over the noise of the pool area. Walking down several floors just to call the children for meals was becoming an exhausting daily chore.

We started looking for a solution to this communication gap, and an announcement system was the obvious answer.

Why a standard announcement system didn't fit

Most dedicated announcement systems need complex new wiring and dedicated microphones. They are designed for offices and public areas and don't blend into the design of a home. Finding a place to put the microphones was a problem in itself.

The workaround

Our team found another way: use the telephone handsets already in the house as microphones, and the music system's speakers for broadcasting. To make that work, we:

• Upgraded the house to an IP-based EPABX (the phone system)
• Added a gateway to an intercom extension, which gave us an audio line-out
• Connected that line-out to the music amplifier through a line mixer
• Gave the swimming pool speakers their own telephone extension number using a SIP paging gateway

How it works for the family

Anyone in the house can dial the swimming pool extension from any phone and speak. Their voice plays through the pool speakers. If music is playing, it pauses automatically for the announcement and resumes afterwards.