A dedicated home automation server.
The Vault at its core is a performant mini PC that can be used for a variety of use cases. One of them is to run a home automation server like Home Assistant, OpenHab, or Node Red!
If you’re looking to pick the right hardware platform before you start, let’s look at the most important aspects of a solid and secure solution.
1. Cloud vs. On-Premise
Before getting started with any automation solution, it’s best to decide where the automation engine should live. Hosting your home automation server in the public cloud is convenient and easy, but cloud-based home automation systems have some obvious downsides. First and foremost, you need to consider how private you want your personal data to be. Your home automation system likely knows whether you are home, when you’re sleeping, if you’re on vacation, and and so much more. Microphones can listen to everything you say (or do) and commonly even send samples from your home back to the cloud servers for analysis! This is to say nothing of giving physical access to your home via software to unlock your doors! Further, what if your internet connection goes offline? You may not even be able to get into your front door unless your lock can access the internet! These kinds of issues can be mitigated by running an on-premises solution that gives you and only those that you trust control of your home and your devices.
2. Performance
For a home automation solution to work well, the experience needs to be seamless. No one wants to walk up to their front door and wait for the door to unlock because of slow internet, or activate the ‘movie’ scene in the TV room only to have the lights dim a few minutes late.
Hardware performance is an important consideration. The Raspberry Pi is a great and cost effective device to get started on, but the weaker CPU and volatile microSD storage can lead to performance and reliability issues for complex home automation environments.
When it comes to picking the right platform for your home automation server, you want to ensure it’s powerful enough to handle your entire system today and in the future as your system grows in size and complexity!
3. Cost
When looking for the best fit overall cost is an important consideration. This can be a recurring cost when hosted in the cloud, or a one-time cost when purchasing your own hardware. You also need to factor in ancillary costs like power usage, future upgrades etc.
While a cloud- solution can get you started very affordably, costs add up over time. If you’ve decided in favor of an on-premise solution, choosing a mini PC with plenty of power but also low-power usage is the way to go.
How the Vault fits (in)
Our most popular models – the FW2B and FW4B – make for ideal platforms for your ultimate home automation system. Each delivers enough power to future-proof your home automation solution, is cost-effective (including low energy usage), and can run just about any automation software you want.
With as many as 6x USB ports and a low price point, the FW2B is a great choice for starters. You’ll have plenty of connectivity for popular add-ons like zigbee and Z-Wave modules, or other USB peripherals. With a max power draw of 12W (FW2B) and 16W (FW4B) you’ll also keep your energy bill in check. The FW4B is the most popular Vault overall and is more than up to the task of running your home automation environment!
Our Product Recommendations:
How we can help
The benefits of partnering with Protectli
Meet: The Vault
The Vault is compact, quiet and built on reliable components: Get Intel CPUs & NICs, no moving parts, and up to 64GB RAM.
Every Vault can be custom-configured and is available as 2-Port, 4-Port and 6-Port models.
We stress-test every unit before it ships from our facilities in California, so you can rely on a quality product.
Barebones or preconfigured.
All Vaults are OS agnostic and support popular open source firewall distros like pfSense, OPNsense, Untangle, or operating systems like Windows and Linux.
All units are available preconfigured with a variety of option hardware components, or barebones.
On top of that, we offer the Vault pre-configured with coreboot, an open source device firmware. Coreboot allows for maximum security, transparency, and audit-ability.
Get Started
Request a Quote
Looking for a quote to get started? It’s simple and instantaneous: Add your products to cart, request a quote from there.