Asrock shows wifi router with iot support
Asrock announced a somewhat surprising product at its press conference at the Computex. We know the company from its motherboards and compact PCs, but Asrock now showed an innovative router that supports various other protocols in addition to WiFi.
Asrock, which has been producing routers for a year without our knowledge, demonstrated its latest router during Computex in Taipei: the X10. The router supports wireless 802.11a, b, g, n and ac. In addition, the X10 can also simultaneously operate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks at speeds of up to 400Mbit/s and 867Mbit/s respectively. In addition to four WiFi antennas, the X10 has a few other antennas, namely for iot, or ‘internet of things’.
That’s a name that doesn’t ring any bells with many consumers, but Asrock showed how it can be used in combination with an LT10, a GPS tracker to automate the house a bit or keep an eye on your belongings or children. For example, with the LT10 Tracker you can set a proximity rule if you are a few kilometers from home to turn on the lights and heating or air conditioning. You can also keep an eye on whether your car is still in its parking space, or where your child is hiding.
In addition to lora support, the X10 has support for home automation networks, thanks to a Zigbee antenna. With Zigbee you can wirelessly control all kinds of equipment in your home, such as Philips Hue lamps, or connect the equivalent of Osram or Swann. The good news is that you don’t need a Hue Bridge or equivalent; the X10 acts as a router for your lamps.
In addition to the router, Asrock also showed motherboards, such as the X99 Taichi, a white and black motherboard that should offer many features for a relatively modest suggested retail price of $219. There are three metal-reinforced PCIe slots, two Intel gigabit network ports, USB 3.1 ports, onboard WiFi ac and two M2 slots. In addition, the company showed a Fatal1ty X99 Professional Gaming i7 board with largely similar features for $259.
The small PCs were also represented with a DeskMini 110, a small case in the 5×5 form factor, which specifically left room for Intel’s boxed processor cooler, so that CPUs with a TDP of up to 65W can be accommodated. If you want even smaller, the company has upgraded its BeeBox: instead of a Braswell socket, it contains an i3-6100U or i5-6200U and the small box has USB-C connections.