Micro Mart - 10 March 2016_

44 Issue 1404

I

n the past couple of years

Devolo has delivered some

very classy Powerline gear,

but now it's branching out

into IoT territory with its

Home Control range.

By way of giving your home

control ambitions a kick start,

Devolo has bundled three

items into an appropriately

named Starter Pack. It

includes the all-important

communications hub or

‘Central Unit’, and alongside

that a door/window contact

and a smart metering plug.

My immediatereaction to

this is that it covers both the

home control and security

imperatives, though I’m not

sure people generally come to

this party expecting to attack

the problem so widely from

the outset.

For those interested, you

can buy theWindow sensor

and smart plug separately

for £39.99 each, making the

central unit worth about £100.

Toget this kit operational

the central unit needs placing

at good location in your

home, where it'sroughly

equidistant from all the other

devices, but is also near

Bluetooth. Howwever, it does

overlap some cordless phone

services a little.

This technology isn’t

designed for high data

transfer rates; instead it’s

focused more onreliability,

and it offers a generous range

of up to 100m if outdoors,

and 30m indoors.

Getting set up is a little

fiddly, though you onlyreally

need to do it once, thankfully.

Each central control hasa

unique code that youregister

on thewww.mydevolo.com

website, and if yourrouter

allows the correct ports

through, you’ll soon be able

to add the other items to

the system.

Or you can once it has

done a firmware update, in

my instance.

But actually, you can do so

much more than just control

enough to therouter to be

connected. Router connection

can be via an Ethernet

cable or in a power socket

that’s part of a Devolo dLan

powerline network.

Once this bridge to the

internet has been created, you

can use it toremotely control

any Devolo smart equipment

using an app on a phone,

tablet or through the web.

And it also enables the device

to alert you should something

change that you need to be

aware of.

Those wondering why you

need the central control box,

rather than just use therouter

to talk to the peripherals

need torealise that this

hardware communicates using

a wireless technology called

Z-Wave, and not any variant

of the 802.11 standard.

Z-Wave operates in the

sub-gigahertz frequency

range, around 900MHz, so it

isn’t competing with wi-fi or

DETAILS

• Price: £179.95


• Manufacturer: Devolo


• Website:
  http://www.devolo.co.uk


• Requirements:
  Broadband connection
  and wi-fi access via
  router or access point

Devolo is riding the Z-Wave to the future of smart devices

Devolo Home

Control Starter

Pack

Contains

• Devolo Home Control Central Unit.


• Devolo Home Control Door/Window Contact.


• Devolo Home Control Smart Metering Plug.