Behind Pricom Lighting's Volunteer-Friendly Console for Smaller Churches

Founder, President, and Principal Engineer Robert Scheffler sat down with Church Production to shine light on how his family business is helping small-to-medium churches produce better worship, more affordably, with the LCS-2 lighting console.

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When business owner and engineer Bob Scheffler started Pricom Design in 1981 in Wheaton, Illinois, the company primarily performed computer repairs. But its services crept into the zone of extremely creative, too. “We started out designing little widgets for a few friends and family customers,” Scheffler says, “including Trivial Pursuit timers, model rocket launchers, hotel wakeup callers, model railroading controllers, theatrical lighting controllers, etc.”

Of all the forward-thinking and sophisticated engineering creations that came out of Pricom in its early days—many sold to large companies like Motorola and T-Mobile—one in particular kept showing up, getting refinement, and becoming a calling card of the business: professional lighting controllers.

Even as a boy, Scheffler had an affinity for them. “Since I was 13, I’ve been very involved in community theater and theme parks, as a tech, and always in lighting,” he states. “I’ve been doing theater since before there were electronic dimmer boards.”

By age 16, Scheffler was a full-fledged technical software and hardware engineer—a natural, and still honing his skills in community theatre. “I wanted to build the light board,” he says. It was a dream he saw to fruition at Pricom in the 1990s, where he built several that were installed in theaters in Chicago.

Once that goal was met, Scheffler’s heart and now family business—with a number of his 10 children working alongside him, including son Steven, CEO and commercial airline pilot, and daughter Stephanie, director of manufacturing and operations and a church tech—turned to church lighting, specifically.

“A few years ago we put in a lighting system at our church,” Scheffler notes. “And we started through the struggle of what do you use as a controller?” Since his family’s local 300-seat church, Meridian Point Church (MPC), now located in Peyton, Colorado, didn’t have the budget for a $10 thousand light board, the software and hardware engineer had to do what he does best and get creative.

Following is a Q&A that chronicles Pricom Lighting’s journey toward developing professional quality lighting controllers and DMX distribution accessories to fill the needs of today’s smaller churches and their technical teams.

CPM: How did your daughter Stephanie’s role at your church speed your development process along?

Scheffler: With Stephanie's connection as the technical director of MPC, Pricom has done most of the installation of the sound and lighting equipment at the church. We’d been struggling with finding the right blend of user-friendliness and volunteer-friendliness. It’s the classic problem at a smaller church, where you don’t really have a perfect rehearsal. You know, you have a rehearsal on Saturday and then Sunday morning in the run-through before the first service, maybe the guitar player moves over three feet, and all of a sudden—whoa, wait, all the locations that I had set [have moved]. At that point, a volunteer can’t just hit a “go” button. We wanted to create something that we could use that allowed volunteer-friendly live editing.

“I can bring the products into the church and really have an idea of what we need in a product. It’s nice not just for the testing, but it’s handy because you get a feel for what churches actually need on a Sunday morning.”

Robert Scheffler, Founder, President, and Principal Engineer, Pricom Lighting, Peyton, CO

CPM: Is this what you call the LCS-2, the lightboard you had on display at the Church Facilities Conference and Expo (CFX) in Dallas at the end of September 2021?

Scheffler: The LCS-2 is the little brother to our LCS-1 that we used for productions for about five years. But it was a little too big for the market size we were looking for, so we created the LCS-2, which is what we showed at CFX.

CPM: So now that you’re focusing your products on the church market, it has to be very convenient for you as an engineer that you have this up-close-and-personal training ground.

Scheffler: It’s nice because I can bring the products into the church and really have an idea of what we need in a product. It’s nice not just for testing, but it’s handy because you get a feel for what churches actually need on a Sunday morning. Projectors. Sound boards. Phantom power buttons. You know, all manner of fun things that happen between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

As well as being the technical director, Stephanie writes and directs an Easter and Christmas production at the church, so we do that every year and that’s another one of our test beds to use the product—in more of a drama environment.

CPM: Give us an example of how you get a feel for what churches actually need, because that’s a very important thing you’re doing to get that feedback on the front end of your design process.

Scheffler: The LCS-1 was geared toward bigger churches. It’s everything I would personally ever want in a lightboard. When we started looking at the 200-1,000 seat church and what they need, we decided we needed a smaller console that fit in smaller tech booths. It was also important to get the price point down. So, trying to get the price so that a church could afford it and let them step up their control was really what we were going for.

The LCS-2 was the productization of all our learning and trying to use the LCS-1 in the church environment. We started rearranging things based on the feedback from Stephanie, from her wearing her technical director hat and lighting hat at church—and also from other volunteers at the church.

CPM: What other important lessons did you learn at your 300-seat church there in Peyton that have helped you create better lighting control for small churches?

Scheffler: If you have somebody that’s full-time on staff that has a position called “lighting designer,” then you probably have the budget for a big-boy lighting controller.

Our goal is to make that same level of control available for smaller-budget churches without breaking their bank accounts. You can do so much with this console. The LCS-2 doesn’t just operate the way every other board does. This console is designed for church techs by church techs.

SPECIFICATIONS FOR THE LCS-2 ADVANCED LIGHTING CONTROL SYSTEM

  • 32 Motorized Multifunction Faders
  • 10.1" and 7" Touch Screens
  • Precision T-Bar for manual fades
  • 8 Universes Total, 4 Direct DMX Outputs
  • SMPTE and MIDI Timecode Input and Output

LCS2 Overview:

The LCS2 (or L2, as we like to call it) was created BY church techs FOR church techs, inspired by the needs of our own church. For years we used free software and several MIDI control panels to try and create an environment that was flexible and volunteer friendly. Windows updates, USB devices, too much desk space, no way to easily adjust a moving head position, all added to the frustration.

The L2 is the perfect blend of manual and automatic control creating a volunteer friendly atmosphere. Many churches pre-program all the lighting cues in advance, then leave a volunteer to press the button. That is fine if you have the time and staff for pre-programming. However, at smaller churches (like ours) there is no time to pre-program cues, and you never know where the musicians will stand until Sunday morning rehearsal.

We created the L2 to EASILY re-aim, adjust, and just plain manually control moving heads on-the-fly without a computer and mouse. Most consoles and computer software forces you to be in "Program" or "Run" mode, that just isn't reality. Pastors can change their path at any time, and of course the special speaker will be unpredictable. So you need something that can operate modern complex moving head lights, but allow you to adjust settings quickly while running live.

LCS2 Features:

  • 32 Motorized Multifunction Faders. Direct edit light levels, or any parameter of a complex fixture
  • User-friendly interface on 10.1" and 7" dual touch screens
  • 10 position Cue Runner panel with high-quality keys for playing cues from each stack
  • Precision Dual T-Bar faders providing precise control of manual fades
  • Each fader or Cue Runner has an independent OLED display giving quick information and status
  • High quality keyboard for speedy data entry with backlit keys
  • 8 Universes total on ArtNET over Ethernet, with 4 direct DMX outputs on the back panel
  • SMPTE LTC and MIDI Timecode Input for triggering any Cue or Effect by Timecode
  • SMPTE LTC and MIDI Timecode Output for syncronizing external show control
  • Stereo Audio Output on professional ballanced XLR connectors. Play music or effects directly from the L2
  • Dual 12V LED cue lights on BNC connectors with adjustable brightness to suit any ligh level
  • Top panel USB jack for removable storage to backup shows, or connect an external mouse and keyboard
  • Temperature controlled variable speed cooling fan stays silent when not needed
  • PNET Bus for I/O expansion. Based on the CAN bus, this connects to many other PRICOM accessories
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