interested in having a ‘smart home’? want to do a lot more than just switch a few lights on and off? want to save energy and cut down on your electric and fuel bills? want a higher level of comfort and safety for your home? Well Devolo think they might have the answer and it’s called home Control.
There is an boosting selection of smart home devices from different makers to choose from. With it comes a widening number things you can control either through an app on your smartphone regardless of your location or you can build logic driven sequence that act autonomously. You can now control heating, tailoring it to the needs of an individual room, get warnings if smoke is detected, monitor the power consumption of devices, brew a coffee when you get up, the list goes on.
Devolo AG, based in Germany has been developing communications systems considering that 2002 and is best known in the consumer market for its dLAN powerline adapters.
Earlier in 2016 they expanded their product portfolio by using a choice of Z-Wave devices under the home control banner. The range currently includes a central unit which is compatible with the existing powerline adapters, window/door sensors, motion sensor, power metering plug, smoke detector, crucial fob switch, wall switch, room and radiator thermostats. Whilst they don’t have any of their own lightbulbs they do support Philips Hue.
This review of the Starter pack is the first in a series over the coming weeks where we are going to take a look at the products in the range to figure out the capabilities of the system and if it lives up to the claims on the packaging to be – Easy, Reliable, Expandable.
Devolo have taken a bold step and moved into a growing Internet of things market with their portfolio of Z-wave based devices. The Starter pack at £179.99 is the first essential building block.
Avboende
First we will start with the £180 UK Starter pack (Art No: 09508). As we want some flexibility positioning the controller to give optimal coverage we will also use a Devolo dLAN 650+ (Art No:9218) to supply an additional network connection.
Startpaketet innehåller:
20 page instruction booklet – don’t throw this away as it has the device serial number and safety ID on a sticker on the top ideal hand corner.
Home control central with UK plug (Art No: 2601)
2m Cat5 Patch Lead
Mätningsplugg (Art nr: 2655)
Door/window contact (Art No: 2648)
Magnet för dörr/fönsterkontakt
4 off Ph1 head screws for securing the door/window contact and magnet
3 off 3M double sided foam pads, an alternative to the screws
The Devolo ranges comes nicely packed with an inner cardboard box and the glossy outer, both of which can go to your recycling bin. There is not too much excess plastic to dispose of.
The claim on the box is that it doesn’t get any quicker or much easier than this: a smart home in 10 minutes. just unpack it, plug it in and get started! Vi har ställt in timern så låt oss komma igång.
Första installationen
Before powering up any of the devices it is recommended to create a home control account at www.mydevolo.com. registering for a new account is straightforward, you will need to finish registration by clicking the link in the confirmation email. once logged in with your email and password you will be taken to the myDevolo overview. quick and easy so far.
To give us flexibility positioning the central unit we used the dLAN 650+, plugging it in beside the router and then connecting the patch cable. We then plugged the central unit into a socket in the hall which is at the centre of the house. The two units starting talking within seconds.
As the central unit doesn’t have wifi it needs to be placed within patching distance of a hub or use a powerline device like this setup, I guess that is Devolo’s intention.
Back on the myDevolo site select the home control icon and then you are presented with pre registered central Units, at this stage only ‘Demo Haus’ is available. Om du klickar på “+” -ikonen lägger till en ny enhet. first you have to enter your physical address, we guess this is used to pull in weather data. then give your central unit a name. The system then goes off to find any units on the network. Within seconds the unit is found and we are asked to confirm the unit serial number. We are prompted to do a software upgrade on the central unit. After a download, a reboot and a couple of clicks we are prompted to start adding devices.
Lägga till enheter
We start by adding the door/window switch to the front door in our test house. The device is around 94mm tall, 26mm large and protrudes 22mm. It has a translucent base and a glossy white cover. The translucent base allows the activate LED to be seen from all angles. once opened it’s clear to see what figures out the size of the unit, its CR123A battery and below it the antenna. Devolo have selected the Varta professional Lithium battery which deliver 3V and 1600mAh. These are relatively inexpensive, a quick search found 10 for £14.00. Endast tiden kommer att berätta om deras livslängd. There is a switch protruding on the back of the unit and an internal switch. Our first thought was that these were for anti-tamper purposes but having checked with Devolo, the switches cannot activate a rule. also the devices are not suitably IP rated for outdoor use.
Since its going on a uPVC door we opt to use the self adhesive pads, the existing standard alarm system sensors are located in the same fashion. After pulling the battery tap the switch goes into discovery mode as indicated by the pulsing LED, this can also be triggered by flicking the switch on the rear of the unit 3 times in quick succession.The adhesive pad for the sensor fits perfectly but you will need to cut a pad to fit the magnet. Vi fastnar dessa vid ytterdörren. before doing this we checked the permissible gap between the magnet and the sensor. It still worked with a 20mm gap, this was beneficial as the shape of the door profile indicated the magnet could not go perfectly next to the sensor. We stuck these to the door and door frame.
The setup of the device through my Devolo could not have been much easier and a short video illustrated the steps. We then gave the device a name and location and picked a suitable icon. If you don’t want the LED on the device to signal a change then select the ‘No’ option under ‘visual feedback’.
The newly installed device now appears in the device list with its current state, temperature, brightness and battery state.
Following the statistics link you will see graphs of triggers, temperature and brightness over time. Denna skärmdump illustrerar en bästa soluppgång när ljusstyrkan ökar
Going back to the main dashboard the layout can be modified by dragging and dropping widgets. The dashboards default name is ‘Ubersichtsseite’, which translates to ‘about summary page’ but this is easily changed. another example is on the device page where the search field says ‘geratenamen suchen’, which translates to ‘random names search’. Det finns några områden runt webbplatsen, inklusive FAQ som har missat översättningsinsatserna. While these shouldn’t stop a user getting up and running, this is something Devolo must work on. The web site has an online chat facility but anytime we tried to use the service it was off line. We did submit a number of questions and these were answered by means of email within 7 hours.
It’s time to add the final device of the starter pack, the smart Metering Plug. Det är en liknande process som att lägga till den tidigare switchen. go to Devices, press the ‘+’ sign to add a device and select the type of device you want to add, in this case the smart Metering Plug.
With a few clicks the device is found and added to the network.
As the name suggests you can switch devices on and off by means of the plug but it can also tell you the power being consumed by the device and the total power consumed in kWh. considering that one of the justifications for a smart home is energy conservation this could be used to figure out which device are consuming high amounts of energy. The ability to add a cost per kWh or to aggregate total power consumption or cost for the whole property is missing so it is impossible to see exactly how much different appliances are costing. Devolo please add this to your software development plan.
In essence we were up and running in just over 10 minutes, I am sure it would have been within 10 minutes if we skipped the software update and reboot of the central Unit.
Går mobil
Next to setup the iOS app. A quick search for myDevolo in the app store and the press of a button the 52.7mb app was installed. use the same email and password created on the desktop site to login. The app shares the same style as the desktop site and uses tiles to show the status of the devices. like the desktop version some of the content is in German such as the FAQs. Our preference was to use the desktop site for setting up and configuring the system. The system cannot use your mobile devices location so there is no geofencing option if you wanted to bring your lights on when you are within say 500 meters of home.
Bli smart
So now the devices have been set up it’s time to make them work. The first thing we want to do is add a schedule for the hall light, not just on and off but to react to its environment. So it’s into the schedules option. as with lots of areas of the site you get some beneficial overlay prompts on what to do next. It was easy to set the light to come on and go off at certain times, you can even set start and end dates for the schedule. We did think the schedule could be smarter, as the site is pulling in weather data for the location, why could it not use dynamic dusk and dawn times i.e turn on 15 min before dusk. The ability to set up a random switching pattern would be beneficial to give the impression someone is in the property when on vacation.
It is also possible to add some ytterligare logik. Att inrätta en policy var enkelt bara dra och släpp de widgetar du vill använda i logiken. Till exempel ville vi låta hallljuset tändas om ytterdörren öppnades i mörkret och ljuset inte tänkte på. Så dra först dörromkopplaren till “if” -sidan och klicka sedan på den snodda för att avslöja inställningen för temperatur, ljusstyrka och timing. Vi valde den mindre än symbolen genom att klicka på = -tecknet tills det dök upp och valde 20% ljusstyrka. Vi är inte säkra på vad 20% ljusstyrka är exakt så det kan ta lite finjustering. Släpp sedan ljusströmbrytaren till “if” -sidan med den logik som valts till “och”. Välj det på den lätta kakel, eftersom vi inte vill att ljuset ska tändas om det redan var på. På “då” -sidan släpper ljusplattan och steg omkopplaren till på. Spara denna policy och inom några sekunder har vi ett smart hälsningsljus i hallen.
Domen
Det finns några saker som kan förbättras. Att inte ha någon WiFi -åtkomst kanske inte passar alla användare och skrivbordsgränssnittet hade några tyska doppningar med jämna mellanrum. IOS -appen är grundläggande och saknar en del av finessen i skrivbordsversionen. Ljusstyrka mäts i %, ett alternativ för LUX kan vara mycket mer meningsfullt. Schemaläggningsfunktionen gör det möjligt för användaren att ställa in grundläggande på och av -tider, det skulle vara fördelaktigt att tillåta ytterligare dynamiska alternativ som skymning och gryningstidsutlösare eller slumpmässiga tidpunkter. Förmågan att kosta apparater konsumtion skulle vara trevlig. Ingen geofencing så att den inte kan få lamporna när du är 500 meter från ditt hem. Förmågan att aggregera och kosta kraftförbrukningen skulle välkomnas.
På plussidan är hårdvaran robust och väl konstruerad och programvaran är tydlig och kortfattad i en webbläsare. Startpaketet var igång på cirka 10 minuter som utlovat. Enhetstemperatur, ljusstyrka, grafikförbrukningsalternativ är användbara när du försöker hitta trender. Att lägga till enheter var en felfri process och systemet levde upp till marknadsföringsförväntningarna som en snabb och enkel introduktion till hemmenautomation.
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