While at the summer 2019 InfoComm Show in Orlando, Fla., Duke DeJong, vice president of systems integration for national AV integrator CCI Solutions, was at dinner with members of Northview Church, longtime client of the Olympia, Wash.-area integrator. The church’s engineer got a summons on his mobile phone from one of the church’s satellite venues in Central Indiana alerting him to a problem with one of the AV systems there. He was able to not only communicate with someone at the church (likely a volunteer since it was a satellite location) but was also able to look directly into the system in question, letting him diagnose the problem and remotely guide a fix for it. The situation was remedied before dessert arrived.
The situation was remedied before dessert arrived.
As houses of worship move from the megachurch model to that of multiple satellite locations, it’s making monitoring, maintenance and repair of their AVL systems more challenging. Fortunately, networked systems are helping create solutions, and they’re aspects of systems design that church architects and designers should include from the beginning of projects.
“In the last few years we’ve really seen the multisite model take off, and that can present technical challenges,” says DeJong. “When you had just one large church location, you could have all of your technical people focused there. But with multisite you might have a technically savvy person at one or two locations but only volunteers at others. For instance, Northview Church’s locations are between 20 and 60 minutes’ drives apart. You can do basic troubleshooting, like rebooting a hard drive, over the phone, but not but not be able to look at problems like screens or playback devices not working.”
Connecting on the LAN
Connecting all locations’ AV systems on a LAN, and connecting that LAN to the Internet is the ideal solution for this situation. That starts with specifying AV products that are networkable and that can offer remote access, usually via their own IP addresses. Even a few years ago, that would have presented a fairly small pool of possibilities. Today, however, the number of audio and video products and systems that can be networked and remotely accessed has vastly expanded, in large part thanks to the growing ubiquity of the Dante networking format as well as the AES67 standard, which allows Dante to interface with other network formats and standards.
Today ... the number of audio and video products and systems that can be networked and remotely accessed has vastly expanded, in large part thanks to the growing ubiquity of the Dante networking format as well as the AES67 standard....
“We have a lot more choices now than we’ve had before, but the best solutions are still towards the upper end of the price range,” DeJong explains. “But we’re able to find systems that have those capabilities in every category we need.”
For instance, CCI has installed Shure’s ULX-D wireless microphone systems in the main sanctuary and Shure’s QLX-D systems in its children’s area. These use an Ethernet connection to network with other components. Those are then accessible remotely via a remote-desktop app. But that configuration of product, network and remote accessibility is the template for the other systems in the church’s various locations, including their projectors, power sequencers, audio and lighting consoles, as well as the Ross video switchers used in each location, which can also be remotely re-programmed, if necessary.
Cost factors
As mentioned, products and systems with network and remote-access features will cost somewhat more than those that don’t, and as this strategy is applied to multisite churches, those costs are multiplied. But the costs are trending steadily downward, following the typical pricing paradigms of electronic systems, and the cost to have repair technicians to come on site to fix problems is only going to increase And to quote a tagline from a certain credit card commercial from a few years ago, the value of having a balky projector suddenly fixed just before a Sunday morning service? Priceless.
CCI added another layer of connectivity to key rooms in the Northview church locations by installing an IP-enabled PTZ camera in the back of the room, giving him a perspective in addition to being able to peer inside the network.
CCI added another layer of connectivity to key rooms in the Northview church locations by installing an IP-enabled PTZ camera in the back of the room, giving him a perspective in addition to being able to peer inside the network.
The skilled staff at the church’s main location will do most of the remote troubleshooting and programming, though they can access the systems from anywhere, as the dinner in Orlando illustrated. However, a church’s integration partner can also be called on for this. DeJong says this kind of monitoring happens occasionally during the labor warranty on a project, but it’s also there as a potential service for future needs. And CCI Solutions will keep some clients’ show files on hand that they can reload remotely in case of a systems crash.
“It’s a lot cheaper than having to put a technician on a plane,” he says. “And if it’s something straight ahead like a software or firmware update, we can do that usually without charge to the client, which helps maintain the relationship.”
Provisioning for networked systems and remote access to them can solve a lot of problems for tech-savvy churches as they expand, as well as guard against them happening in the first place. However, it opens up another possible set of issues: network security. That’s a topic we’ll address here in the near future.
