Days 3 and 4 of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2024 in Barcelona continued to underscore the themes from the first half of the tradeshow from a residential and resimercial technologies perspective.
The impact of industrial design, the ability to work in light commercial applications, concealment capabilities, and ample vendor support showed in the booths I visited and products I saw at Gran Via Fira Barcelona to close this year’s record-breaking expo.
Snap One
The solutions at the Snap One booth conveyed how their brands are working in harmony and providing a compelling unified story for dealers and their clients.
Eric Harper started by showing Snap’s new video surveillance products from Luma and Clare. The AI-enabled x20 from Luma previewed at CEDIA Expo is NDAA compliant, now works with OvrC, and sends customers device alerts and information via the new Luma Insights platform.
On the Clare side, Harper was excited to show attendees the new ClareVision Smart Video Doorbell, which makes sense in the product family to complement the brand’s video offerings. Snap One already had the Chime video doorbell from its Control4 brand.
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“We’re all about helping our partners build better businesses and deliver better end-customer experiences together,” Harper says.
“A lot of what you see walking through the booth is just that, all tying it together. Think about what would otherwise be disparate categories – media distribution, networking, surveillance control. How do we bring these together to make a partner’s project better for the end customer, more reliable, save the technician more time on every project so they can be more productive. We’ve done that across the board with these categories.”
Toward that end, Snap within its large booth showed its new Binary and Episode MoIP amplifiers; WattBox power products in multiple outlets and form factors, including Multi-Function 800 Series Trigger; and sleek Control4 Smart Lighting keypads.
McIntosh & Sonus Faber
You couldn’t miss McIntosh’s stack of new MC2.1KW Monoblock Amps in its booth, bearing the 75th anniversary logo. The new amplifiers also feature the iconic blue faceplate and produce up to 2,000 watts power.
The celebratory occasion for McIntosh coincides with increased visibility for the brand among custom integrators. The company is pushing what it refers to as Ci-Fi – high fidelity audio for custom integration. On the ultra high end, Sonus Faber introduced the Suprema system to begin its own milestone year.
“It’s been a very busy beginning to the year. Not only are we celebrating 75 years of McIntosh but it is the 40th anniversary for Sonus Faber,” notes McIntosh Group’s David Mascioni.
“We wanted the two brands to start the year off strong, which is why we went to CES. We had been working on this crazy project between the brands and we put three years of development to come up with Suprema, which is by far the most ambitious project ever put together [by the brands].”
Crestron
Crestron showed several new DM NAX devices, including the DM-NAX-XSP audio return processor and four new DM NAX, Audio-over-IP edge devices that are compatible across DM NVX AV-over-IP, DM NAX Audio-over-IP, AES67, and Dante audio networking platforms.
The company continues to cater to residential and commercial integrators, with such products that are well suited for both markets. Additionally, the Crestron Home user interface keeps getting refined for easier navigation and more personalization in conjunction with OS 4’s release.
“We have all the varieties of control for OS 4, a good way to show the universal control experience,” says Crestron’s Georgio Galaris.
“We completely revamped the software from an aesthetic level. We made the text larger, we made the pictures more present, updated the icons, and introduced the new lighting scheme designer.”
Kordz
The company had its new Pro SlimCat Cat 6 U/UTP Network Patch Cord, also highlighting the importance of its packaging.
“This show, we’re really focused on showing dealers our new packaging. Most people don’t think of packaging solutions as particularly innovative,” says Kordz’ Benjamin Yeh.
“So, we design all our products with the installer in mind, and when we say product we mean the packaging and all the use case situations.”
That led to the latest Kordz innovation, which makes the cable selection process easier and less labor intensive for installers in the field.
Wall-Smart
Galia Ben-Dor demonstrated the latest materials and newest devices that the design-minded company can now conceal or blend into surfaces unobtrusively.
The award-winning wireless access point cover remains a popular Wall-Smart item now targeting the European market, and the company has a creative way for sprucing up a Sonos soundbar. Black Nova was among the control interfaces Wall-Smart has added recently.
“This is the first time we are showing the networking product here. People are like, ‘Whoa, why didn’t you come a year ago, we just had a project we could have used those,’” she says. “It’s a need – when you’re walking down the hall with those on the ceiling, you have to hide it.”
D-Tools
The software specialist had more enhancements to illustrate now that System Integrator is on version 21.
“Version 21 will be out in a couple of weeks,” says D-Tools’ Tim Bigoness. “This release was, when we have a lot of customer requests you try to get them in in between major functionality releases – we believe that’s important.
“We do about three updates each year, some have more functionality than others. Most of what we do is look at where there’s a backlog in features. Sometimes they’re easy, sometimes they’re foundational.”
Bigoness adds that with multiple releases per year, users are always getting some sort of productivity enhancements. The most requested feature that was addressed for this version? “Dark mode,” he says.
Nexus 21
The media concealment and motorized lift provider in its aim to have integrators “own the ceiling,” developed the Drop-Down TV Lift for Ceilings and High Walls where not feasible to do otherwise. The L77i lift extends as far as 52 inches and can carry a TV as large as 86 inches and 150 pounds.
Among other wares, Nexus 21 showed its newest member of the DL-65 Series, the DL-65x. It combines powerful dual motors, quiet lift technology, and installation ease as earlier models, with the addition of a new extra-weight swivel mechanism. This mechanically swivels a display to a preferred position, increases the weight capacity from 100 to 175 pounds, and is able to extend up to 38.5 inches.
“[Last] year we spent a lot of time working on features to make things easier for the dealers – requests from dealers to help them spend less time on a ladder and estimate jobs a lot better,” says Nexus 21’s Cory Lovett.
He cites a video the company made about bracketry and how much faster the install is, and the reduced time spent in the ceiling.
Torus Power
The power specialist was showing its AVR Series with voltage regulation as well as other continuing products for the Euro crowd.
“There’s not new releases, but of course there are new people who have never seen these products before,” notes Torus Power’s Kevin Main.
The Torus AVR solutions were behemoths, each weighing in at 100+ pounds. “It’s a good opportunity to show dealers here the inside of the units, see how it’s built, what the technology is,” he says.
Digital Projection
The company launched several products that follow the mantra of simplifying its whole electronics platform. DP is working on trickling down its technologies usually reserved for the high end now to a lower point of entry.
It makes installation time and servicing the projector much quicker, the company says, noting that not every project needs 10,000+ lumens of projection brightness.
The ISE introduction of the E-Vision 10000i WU is one of the most advanced projectors it’s engineered.
MSE Audio
The MSE Audio stable of brands used ISE as a natural place to talk about their ability to work well in residential and commercial applications. Companies such as SoundTube, Rockustics, and Phase Technology had on hand solutions to address outdoors, soundbars, amplifiers, and other versatile components.
MSE’s Shannon Humphrey said there’s more to come this year, because some new products were not introduced in Barcelona but will instead debut at InfoComm.
The SoundTube outdoor product is a “super tuber” because of its robust build quality, and its LED lights fulfilled dealer requests. “People have suggested to us to have lighting on our speakers for a long time,” Humphrey states, “so this was our most popular model.”
Another big debut was the Variable Length Soundbar (VLS), which Phase Tech custom builds with grille dimension based on display dimensions.
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