Below is a description of how Fort Bragg Seventh-day Adventist Church went from a system with some components dating back 30 years to a new easier-to-use and highly capable and integrated AV system.
When I visited the church earlier this year, I was dumbfounded at what I saw; a small niche had been built into the wall of the sanctuary and this is what constituted the tech area (see image below). It was made clear that this system was out of date when they acquired it and it’s been limping along ever since. It was painfully clear that a new integrated system would be needed. The church as a body was motivated and eager to upgrade and while it did take several weeks to design the exact system they would need, once it was proposed, the church board approved it immediately and the equipment was ordered.
When I returned to install the new equipment, it was clear this would not be a smooth experience. Some of the equipment was back-ordered and we had no estimate on how long the wait would be. The mission critical pieces were present and so the install began in earnest as we only had a week to completely change systems. To further complicate matters, we had to assemble a new custom oak tech desk that would largely replace the niche in the wall and house the equipment in a more elegant and secure way. This was first up on the list and we ended up removing the equipment from the rack in what I call the cubby hole and assembling the desk on day 1.
The next few days saw new cables being pulled for a VGA balun for a computer input on the stage, a line to run a new floor monitor, and a string as a pull line for future cabling, if needed. We also installed a video switcher, scaler, new wireless mics, a power sequencer, the digital audio mixer, a dedicated computer for tech to run the switcher software (including recording an H.264 file) and run PowerPoint, if needed.
Some of the issues we encountered included the Ethernet cable I pulled for the computer input on stage failed and had to be replaced, the scaler would not output HDMI content (from a Blu-Ray player) via the VGA connector so we had to replace the Blu-Ray with a regular DVD player, the computer did not have the correct power connector on its power supply to allow me to install a Firewire 800 PCI-Express expansion card so the computer could connect to the audio mixer, there was no way for me to run Ethernet cabling from the sanctuary to the fellowship hall for audio, video, and Internet, and several more problems.
All in all we had a working sound system by Thursday evening and Friday was spent cleaning up and trying to get as far on the other systems as possible. When Saturday came around, all was smooth as silk.
It was an altogether frustrating and rewarding week of install, but we weren’t done yet. It never is one little task, is it? More in next week’s post.
With church technology projects, how do you proactively combat setbacks when technology solutions to guard your time and energy as well as your mental sanity throughout the process?
[…] Last week we ended with the sound system being installed and functional by the end of week 1. On Sunday I decided to move across the building to the fellowship hall where we planned to install a 70-volt in-ceiling speaker system, a 50″ LED TV on the wall, and the remnants of the Sanctuary sound system would be re-purposed to drive the new small AV system. […]