European Custom Installer

Zound Industries announces a Marshall-branded take on the smart speaker-- the Uxbridge Voice, a compact number feature the same design as speakers from the iconic company together with Amazon Alexa capabilities.

The Uxbridge voice measures 13 x 17 x 12cm and weighs 1.4kg. The design features the iconic Marshall logo over a tweed grill, while brass rocker switches in the style of guitar frets control volume, trebel and bass. Also included is a mute switch for the built-in far-field microphone array. Inside is a 30W Class D amplifier capable of pushing up to 96dB of sound pressure at 1m, together with a frequency of 54Hz to 20kHz.

Access Networks announces the A750-- a Wifi 6 certified wireless access point the company says bridges the performance gap from "gigabit" to "multi-gigabit" wifi to support customer demand for better and faster networking.

The A750 handles up to 1024 client connections with increased capacity and improved coverage. Such capability is useful in ultra-dense environments, where the proximity of many individual wifi networks often impedes performance. In addition, the A750 connects more devices simultaneously with built-in eight spatial streams (4x4:4 in GHz and 2.4GHz), MU-MIMO, OFDMA technology and over 4000 unique antenna patterns.

ABB gives customers control of blinds and lights from any mobile device with ABB-free@home flex, a system using Bluetooth connectivity for home control without need for additional wiring.

Users can control the ABB-free@home flex system using the companion ABB-free@home app complete with the management of functions such as blinds or lights. The app also helps with energy consumption, since users can easily switch off the lights when a room is unoccupied. The system is future-proof, and can be upgraded to a full ABB-free@home smart home solution through the integration of a System Access Point.

For further flexibility, timers can set lights to come on at key time. Users can save scenes on the rocker, moving the blinds to a pre-defined position to avoid the glare of the sun in the middle of Summer. For greater control, the app links with movement detectors to program lights to different illumination level depending on the time of day.

According to TrendForce division WitsView, global TV shipments only declined "slightly" in 2019 by -0.9%, reaching 217.8 million units, but the ongoing coronavirus (aka Covid-19) pandemic should further affect the industry in 2020.

The pandemic has lead to stock and financial markets crashing, leading to significant damage to the confidence of consumers in the face of the economy. As a result, consumption of non-essential products has become more conservative. One such non-essential product is TVs, and shipments are set to drop by -5.8% in 2020 to 205.2m units. Further hurting the market is the postponing of major sports events, including the UEFA EURO 2020 and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Josh.ai announces a collaboration with AVPro Edge-- one bringing natural voice control and home automation capability to AVPro Edge audio and video distribution hardware, including amplifiers and switches.

Through the integration, AVPro devices auto-populate the Josh.ai Distributed AV web portal for configuration. Installers can easily assign input sources and output zones for whole-home media control. Josh.ai AVPro Edge support allows users to switch inputs, control volume levels, distribute a single source across multiple zones and route multiple sources across multiple zones verbally via Josh Micro or manually through the Josh.ai app.