Date: 16/Jun/2022

Since the acquisition of Directed, the newly created VOXX•DEI LLC has implemented strategic leadership changes within the Engineering and Technical Service divisions with the primary objective for VOXX•DEI LLC to get back to their roots of, “For Installers, By Installers”. This revived focus was on implementing the feedback the Technical Service team gets from our dealers and installers when working with them day-in-and-day-out with the objective of providing outstanding solutions to our end-customers. The first major change has been the addition of a Director role in the Technical Service division. Ed Catapano, Vice president of Technical Services Group, a subset of VOXX Electronics Corporation’s Shared Services a 30-year, 12-volt veteran installer himself, promoted Chris Libardi to this roll. Chris, a 16-year industry veteran, comes from the install bay primarily installing Viper products for the majority of his tenure. In his new role, Chris’s number one priority is to put the “Installer” first to help improve the solutions VOXX•DEI LLC provides to our dealers. 

June Update

It's been a few months since our first "Back to our roots" communication. Since then, we have received lots of positive feedback from all of you about the changes we implemented. We are happy to announce that we have been hard at work designing and implementing the next phase of changes to make using our solutions even easier. The focus of this this phase has been to address issues that arise during the flashing process where we present confusing, and in some cases even conflicting information for specific vehicles & solutions.

  • Transmission Type Selection

An example of this would be the Automatic/Manual Transmission feature selection. Previously, this option was presented immediately after selecting what module you were flashing, but before selecting what vehicle you were flashing for. In the event the chosen vehicle was using an "OEM" style firmware, (Ford 12, HKRS, NISSSRS etc) the installer would have already chosen Manual Transmission, despite the vehicle/firmware not supporting manual transmission equipped vehicles. By changing the flow of the flash process and gathering the vehicle information following the hardware selection, we can now remove the transmission selection option for firmware that are not supported.

Note: For the time being, this will be limited to the Firmware level, meaning it can only be applied when all vehicles associated to the Firmware are not manual transmission compatible. When using a Firmware that supports both manual and automatic vehicles, the option will still be presented. Be mindful that our products should NOT be installed in any convertible vehicles, soft or hard top with a manual transmission. Installation in such vehicles may pose certain risk and will NOT be supported by VOXX•DEI LLC.

  • Interface Features Selection

One of the more frequent calls the tech team receives comes after the install has been completed, however the behavior of the vehicle/solution is not functioning as expected. This commonly is a result of a key feature or wire not being configured properly. To help reduce this we have made several changes to improve the installer experience on the feature selection page. Previously all menus on this page were collapsed and the user would need to expand them to see what options could be changed. When addressing this, we wanted to make sure the user wasn’t overwhelmed during this portion of flashing so expanding all the menus didn’t make sense.
Based on the interactions we have had with the field, we decided to expand only the Data Feature Configuration menu by default. While all the menus are equally important, this menu will include the key features that are specific to the firmware and vehicle you are flashing for and is the most overlooked. In addition to this change, we also have added the ability to remove default values for features. This means we the user will be prompted to manually select an option before proceeding. This will be applied where an option is either specific to a vehicle trim or option, or where the option is based on installer and consumer preference. An example of each would be Ford 12 [with OEM remote start]/[without OEM remote start] or Honda9 [With Takeover]/[without Takeover]. If the installer does not choose and option, the page will present an error and identify the selection to be made. We will continue to evaluate where it makes sense to apply this logic.

  • Programmable Inputs/Outputs (POI’s)

The POI configuration page was previously its own page that was placed after the rest of the module configuration was completed. It was also laid out in a format that may have made sense based on the functionality of the core, but if we’re being honest, it was not easy on the eyes or Installer friendly. When you expanded this menu, you found yourself spending way to long looking for the wire you wanted to change as it was buried amongst 40+ other wires. We made two major changes here to address these issues. First, we moved this menu where it belongs, on the configuration page. Second, (and more importantly) we have redesigned the layout of this page to be, well... For Installers, By installers. When you expand this menu, you will find that all the wires are now separated by their respective plugs and pin numbers. This also helps identify the wires in the 22-pin plug by correctly grouping wires by input and output.
 

Have a great summer!
       XOXO – Your VOXX•DEI Tech Team