Devolo Home Control St Starter Pack

Ge Get your home under control

Devolo’s home automation system comprises a range of accessories that can monitor and control elements around your house for security and convenience. This starter kit includes a central control unit that connects everything together (and connects to the internet via your broadband), along with a smart metering plug that can turn an appliance on and off and measure its power consumption, and one sensor to detect when a door or window is opened. You can then buy extra units, including motion sensors, smoke- and water-detectors, as well as room and radiator thermostats to control your central heating. Devolo also sells CCTV cameras, but they’re not included in the Home Control system.

Devolo is best known for its Powerline products, which create a network over your mains wiring. This technology is included in the Home Control central unit, which comes as a chunky plug-in mains adapter. So if you already use Devolo’s networking products, the control unit will connect wherever you plug it in. Otherwise, it needs to be attached directly to your router using an Ethernet cable. All the accessories then connect to it wirelessly.

It’s all controlled from a web page that you can access from any PC, or via apps on phones and tablets. We found the web page better than the apps, but it’s all quite straightforward, and we were pleased to find a printed manual included with each item as well as step-by-step guides and instructional videos in the software. Besides simple commands and schedules (like ‘turn on the coffee machine at 7am’), you can create more complex rules (such as ‘turn on the radio and email me if there’s motion downstairs’). You can also add wall switches and key fobs, which let you activate things while you’re at home without using a computer.

Everything works over the internet, so when you’re not at home you can check what’s happening there (assuming the system hasn’t already contacted you to let you know), activate functions or change your rules. Temperature and light can be used as triggers, although light levels are expressed as a meaningless percentage, so we needed some trial and error for functions like ‘turn on the lights when it starts getting dark’. The heating-control features aren’t as clever as something like Nest (see our review, Issue 430). You can set up detailed schedules, but the system won’t learn from experience.

Devolo’s range is based on Z-wave Plus, a home-automation technology that’s supported by a lot of manufacturers, so it should work with most accessories from other brands. So far, though, it doesn’t work with Apple’s more ambitious Homekit technology. If you use this already, you might prefer to consider a Homekit system such as Elgato’s Eve ( www.snipca.com/21761, see our review Issue 462). Then again, Homekit has been slower to catch on than Apple probably hoped, and while the list of products that support it (see www.snipca.com/21762) is getting longer, it includes a lot of names we haven’t seen yet in the UK.

Another common home automation technology, Zigbee, is supported by the comparably priced Wemo range ( www. snipca.com/21765) from another networking company, Belkin. This concentrates on cameras and lightbulbs rather than sensors and thermostats, but can work with Nest, and uses IFTTT (see www.snipca.com/21760) to give you more control options.

Perhaps the biggest objection to all of these systems at the moment is that with each add-on costing up to £90 – even a basic item like a window sensor is £40 – it’s expensive to complete your setup. We think home automation still needs more standardisation and lower prices before it’ll really take off.

Lets you control and monitor your home when you’re away, but it’s pricey