This awesome touchscreen AC router doubles as a home automation hub

By Drew Prindle February 28, 2014

awesome touchscreen ac router doubles home automation hub screen shot 2014 02 28 at 12 53 46 pm — Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you’re rocking a decent DIY home automation setup in your house right now, you’ve undoubtedly got a myriad of different boxes wired up to control your network – modems, routers, access hubs, and more. And with that many gizmos to fiddle with every time you need to adjust something, changing your settings can be a nightmare.

But if Soap, a recently-launched Kickstarter project, ever becomes a reality, this problem may soon become a thing of the past. It’s basically an all-in-one solution for all your home networking needs. Under the hood, it’s packing a boatload of networking tech, including:

Dual-band 802.11ac WiFi router
Bluetooth 4.0
NFC module
RFID module
Z-Wave compatibility
Zigbee compatibility
Insteon compatibility

So, in a nutshell, not only does this badboy give you the best throughput rates for your Wi-Fi network with 802.11ac (see our router buying guide if you’re unfamiliar), it can also handle practically any kind of home automation device you can buy. And that’s not even the best part.

Arguably the coolest thing about Soap is its uber-simplified interface. Instead of buttons or a Web-based settings menu, Soap uses a big 7-inch touchscreen (much like the Almond from Securifi, but bigger, and with more features). In just a few taps, the device’s Android-based operating system allows you to things like:

Add/remove devices from a network
Set bandwidth limits for specific devices
Enable Web filtering and parental controls
And much, much more

On top of all that, Soap is outfitted with a number of awesome security features to safeguard your home against hackers – something that becomes increasingly important as you add more connected devices to your home. In addition to a robust firewall and built-in ad blocker software, it’s got clever features like Spy Mode (network monitoring) and FlyPaper, a setting that creates an “artificial vulnerability” area to lure potential hackers into accessing your network, and then trap them.

There’s far too many features to cover here, so we highly suggest you head over to Kickstarter and check it out for yourself. If you back the project now, you can lock down a Soap box for around $170-$200 bucks – a fraction of what it would cost to buy a router and a bunch of hubs separately.

Topics

Internet of Things (IoT)

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…

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