Centro Architecture
Centro can be deployed as a fully managed cloud service, or self-hosted on your own private cloud or on-premises stack.
Centro Cloud Hosted
Centro Cloud Hosted provides a scalable, high-availability infrastructure for our Centro SaaS solution, ensuring seamless performance and reliability. Our cloud environment leverages a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimise speed and accessibility, delivering content efficiently to users worldwide. With a strong focus on uptime and redundancy, our infrastructure is designed to handle varying workloads, offering robust security, automatic scaling, and continuous monitoring.
Centro Self-Host
For organisations that prefer more control over their infrastructure, Centro can be self-hosted on private cloud environments or on-premises hardware. This option provides greater flexibility, customisation, and control over deployment and security policies.
Centro Stack
- Backend and API — built on .NET 8 (ASP.NET Core) with Entity Framework Core, backed by a MySQL database. A MongoDB database stores logging and telemetry data.
- Admin Dashboard — a Next.js project with Tailwind CSS, supported by our own custom component library.
- Guest web app — a React Native (Expo) application, with real-time updates delivered over SignalR.
Centro Gateway
The Centro Gateway connects the room-control and lighting systems on a building's local network to Centro Cloud. It is a portable, multi-vendor on-site gateway — supporting Lutron, Mode Lighting, Dynalite, and Crestron — that runs on commodity hardware such as a Raspberry Pi or Linux box (systemd) or a Docker container (amd64/arm64), as well as directly on a Crestron 4-Series processor.
The Gateway runs in one of two modes:
- Logic mode — the Gateway hosts the room control on-box, driving the connected hardware directly and advertising only the capabilities it can support. A single gateway can host many rooms.
- Proxy mode — the Gateway acts purely as a secure relay (formerly the Centro Bridge). It runs no room logic locally; instead it registers with Centro Cloud and forwards requests to devices on the building's local network, keeping the control logic in the cloud.
Summary
Centro's flexible deployment options empower businesses to choose the best hosting model to suit their operational needs. Whether you opt for our managed cloud service for ease of use or self-hosting for greater control, Centro delivers a reliable, scalable, and secure solution that adapts to your business growth.