- The new 80,000-square-foot student recreation center at the University of California, Riverside, now features the ListenWiFi Personal Listening System from Listen Technologies Corporation.
The center serves as the hub of recreational, intramural, and club sports on campus, offering a 21,000-square foot weight area, 100 cardio machines, a wide variety of fitness and recreational classes, a 237,000-gallon pool, drop-in basketball, volleyball and badminton games, intramural sports and clubs, and a 32-foot climbing wall called “The Rock.”
Clovis, CA-based firm High-Tech Electric was contracted to install a large, multi-screen media wall for showcasing school events, sharing news, broadcasting sports games, and for other entertainment and educational purposes. The 7x7x28.5-foot media wall connects 18 channels of content, including cable channels, static digital images, and messaging, as well as DVD and other media inputs.
Since the media wall is located near the fitness center portion of the recreation center, UCR wanted students to be able to easily access audio content from any of the 18 channels through their headphones using mobile devices such as iPhones, Androids, and tablets. UCR chose the ListenWiFi Personal Listening System from Listen Technologies because it broadcasts audio from multiple TV channels or other audio sources using digital wi-fi transmission.
Using the free ListenWiFi App available from the Apple App Store or Google Play, students can bring their own wi-fi enabled device and headphones or ear buds and easily switch audio channels with the flick of a thumb. ISP connectivity also provides Internet access for customers connected to the ListenWiFi network.
“The ListenWiFi and server settings were preconfigured, and the system let us customize and manage our channel names, so it was easy to install and set up," said James Gulke of High-Tech Electric, the point person on the project. "We have seen excellent performance, with minimal channel-switching delays, less than two seconds.”
