Re: New £30 Wireless Home Control Starter Kit

[Joseph Heenan <joseph-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joseph Heenan wrote:
> Mark McCall wrote:
>
>> He's a neat little £30 starter package that's a good
introductory
>> taster of
>> home automation...
>>
>> "Simple to use, easy to install and totally affordable, Domia
Lite is a
>> completely wireless remote home control system which for many
people
>> represents the first step towards a smart home. The new range of
Domia
>> Lite
>> products has been designed to give convenient control of lighting
and
>> other
>> electrical appliances within the home by simply the touch of a
button.
>> This
>> RF based wire-free system passes through walls and windows, giving
you
>> control of lights and appliances from as far as 30 metres away...
>>
>> http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/article1839.html
>
> Sounds reasonable... I've ordered one.
>
> Wonder if/how easily the remote can be hacked to let a PC control it
:-)

Well, they arrived today, so nice quick dispatch by simplyautomate.

Two minor critisms:

- no override switch on the plug unit

- for a reason I can't quite fathom, some of the markings on the plug
unit are upside down. I'm sure they must've had a logical reason for
doing this...

As for the remote, it's fairly nifty. You can control upto 8 different
sockets from the one remote. It's powered by a single CR2032 cell. Not
examined it in detail yet, but my initial thoughts are it'd be pretty
easy to get control of the remote over usb.

The sockets themselves are pretty small - they'll happy fit next to each
other on a 4 bar, but are a little too small to fit top-to-top in the 8
bar 2x4 style arrangement.

One perhaps more major critism - there really is no security here.
There's only 8 different "house codes", so if I know you're using
the
domialite system it's fairly easy to brute force your house code and
starts switching your sockets on/off.

(The single chip used in the remote is a ARC M3D L2B, which means
nothing to me or google.)

Joseph