3 year manufacturer's warranty
The Home Control Starter Pack is in itself a nifty piece of equipment as it features a smart metering plug that can be used to set up a presence simulation by connecting lamps or electronic appliances to be switched on and off at alternating times of the day, to deter potential intruders.
detailed, easy to follow instructions
The beauty of a customizable smart system such as Devolo's Home Control is being able to expand your system. You can mix and match sensors with different combinations. To see how the starter pack sensors are set up, check out my review of Devolo's Home Control Starter Pack. The add-on sensors are very easy to integrate to the existing system. They are as follows:
The Devolo Home Control Humidity sensor measures temperature and humidity, recording any changed that may take place. 3M tape and mounting screws are all included so that you can attach them to a wall anywhere in your home.
3M tape and screws included
humidity sensor mounted near window
Devolo Home Control Flood sensor
The Devolo flood sensor or water sensor is very similar in design to the humidity sensor save for a cable with two pin sensors on the very end of it. You would place the water sensor in a utility room, near a washing machine, or water pipes and have the pin sensors touch the surface of the ground so that the pins can measure any water excess. Handy if you ever get a leak!
water sensor mounted under kitchen sink
Devolo Home Control Motion Sensor
The Devolo motion sensor is a wireless PIR sensor with a horizontal view of angle of up to 90 degrees that can detect movement up to a distance of 10 meters. The nifty thing about this motion sensor is that it's smart enough to tell the difference between a person, an object and an animal. You can combine the motion sensor with the metering plug by plugging a light source into the metering plug and have it turn on when the motion sensor detects movement.
mounted on top of door
Devolo Home Control Siren
Devolo's siren produces a sound alarm of 110 decibels, and can be configured with four different alarm tones as well as three additional signal tones and a visual alarm. This is nifty as it allows you to combine the siren with the other sensors to set different alarm tones for different scenarios such as a "break-in", water leak or high temperature.
USB wall plug and USB cable included
Devolo's siren is powered via 1 amp USB wall plug and, just like the humidity, motion and water sensor, it connects via wireless Z-Wave to the control unit, which is the brain of the Devolo smart home security kit.
Alarm Siren measures 11.7cm x 8.1cm x 1.9cm
the alarm can be set to trigger a "red LED alarm" instead of sound
As mentioned earlier, Devolo's siren can be configured with different sound alarms, including police sirens, ambulance, door chime, etc.
Here is a video sample of how each of the alarm sounds produced by the Devolo Home Control Siren sound like:
First thing first, connect Devolo's Home Control Central Unit by plugging in the central unit to a wall socket and using the included Ethernet cable to hook up the central unit to your home's router, or DLAN Powerline if you have one. Since I have one, all I have to do is hook the Ethernet cable from the central unit to the dlan powerline.
If the central unit is not automatically recognized, you can enter it manually by entering the serial number (S/N) located on the back of the central unit (or booklet). The central unit may automatically update itself with a newer software version if one is available. In that case, this process can take up to 5 minutes.
Once connected, follow the prompts to add your sensors, and make sure you pull out the battery tab from behind the sensors.
Once you add your sensors, your dashboard will look like this:
As far as remote functionality, the Devolo Smart Home Security Kit comes with a companion app, called "my devolo", which allows the same functionality as the desktop version but from the convenience of your smart device.
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