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Smart Home Solution Kit 

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I was sent this from France and to be honest my French is non-existent so I needed to wait for a translation before I could start seeing exactly what it could do to achieve – what we all want – to save some money from household bills.

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I have looked at very basic products that do part of what this package does and they basically clip over your mains input cable to measure your electricity consumption.

In fairness if you read your meter regularly you can check consumption what you cannot check is the cost as this is made up of a daily standing charge - even if you use nothing – then so many units at ‘X’ and the remaining units at ‘Y’ and both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are variable.

This product promises to save you ‘up to 15% on energy’, to improve your wellbeing and monitor air quality and also secure your home. Those are three very bold statements.

Delving deeper into these three claims, first the 15% saving it turns out that if you know what an appliance uses you save between 5-15%. The second claim is supported by the purchase of extra modules to detect air quality and remote temperatures. The third relies again on external items and like most security systems it will notify you of intrusions and other problems.

I was sent their ‘e-sylife’ kit which consists of two boxes the first called a ‘Kub’ is an 11cm cube with part of one corner removed. The other box is smaller at 7.5x5x2.5cm. There are also a range of cables and a single sheet called a ‘Quick Installation Guide’ which is in English. The box and all other instructions are in French but as there is an English website all should be OK!!!

So now back to the two boxes supplied, the larger one is called the Kub it has its own MAC address and two connections an Ethernet port and power input.

I see there is a sticker placed on the base of the Kub that says in English, Start The Kub and then start each additional module within two metres of the Kub before moving it to its final position.

This brings me to the second smaller box which I think is the electricity consumption module and there is the Clamp Ammeter to connect over the lead and connect to the smaller box.

I remember many years ago when I was young an old lady who lived over the road saying you can see water, you can small gas but leave electricity to the expects as the first you know about problems is when it’s not there or it is and you get a shock which could be fatal.

Annoyingly I could not download the software, so many things no longer give a URL and just a code to scan which as it turns out when I did I got a message that ‘my account was not valid in the French store’ which just about sums up my time spent trying to look at something in a foreign language.

The link given on the flyer that is meant to be an aid to installation via videos just removes the ‘en’ and replaces it with ‘fr’ http://www.e-sylife.com/en/aide-a-linstallation’/  

There is one link in English http://www.e-sylife.com/en/  

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Features12
Performance12
Value12
Ease of use12
Design12
OverallSmart Home Solution Kit rated 60 out of 100

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