Zones¶

A zone is a region of a place that has its own sound behaviour, independent of individual spots. Zones come in four flavours:

Ambient zones — play a continuous background sound while the listener is inside.
Entry zone — plays once when the listener enters the place.
Exit zone — plays once when the listener exits, and can mark the place as completed.
Maintenance zone — fires sounds tied to maintenance/setup of the listening device. Most setups don't need this.
Boundaries zone — defines the outer perimeter of the place. Optional; when present, leaving the boundary stops playback.

Ambient zones¶

Ambient zones are the most common. Use them for "background atmosphere" — wind, room tone, traffic noise — that should play whenever the listener is in a particular part of the place but should not interrupt the main spot sounds.

Each ambient zone has:

Label — the admin display name. Listeners don't see this.
Beacon sensitivity — the signal strength threshold (1 = least sensitive / strict, 10 = most sensitive / loose). Default is 8 (-85 dBm).
Stop all ambients — when this zone fires, stop every other ambient. Use for "scene change" zones where the previous ambient must not bleed in.
Triggers — same options as spots: beacon, iBeacon, WiFi, GPS.
Sound file — the ambient audio. Loops by default until the listener leaves the zone or another zone takes over.

Adding an ambient zone:

Open the Ambient zones panel.
Click Add ambient zone.
Give it a label, set the sound file, and add triggers.

Ambient zones support the same iOS-compatibility check as spots — a zone whose only trigger is a MAC-based Beacon shows the orange warning.

Entry, exit, and maintenance zones¶

These are special slots — each place has at most one of each. They live in Place settings → Zones.

Entry — sound that plays once when the listener arrives at the place. Often a spoken welcome.
Exit — sound that plays once when the listener leaves. Optionally marks the place as completed in the listener's history.
Maintenance — niche; consult engineering before configuring.

Each special zone has the same trigger and sound options as ambient zones, but only one instance per place.

Boundaries zone¶

A boundaries zone defines the outer perimeter of the place. Use it to stop playback when the listener walks out of the area.

Without a boundaries zone, listeners can carry sounds with them indefinitely after leaving (depending on app behaviour).
With one, the app stops audio as soon as the boundary is exited.
A boundaries zone can require an explicit trigger to activate the place — useful when you want listeners to scan a beacon at the entrance before any sounds play.

Enable the boundaries zone via Place settings → Use boundaries zone.