Same Signature

A couple of days ago, I noticed my coffee pot was indicated as ON, whereas it was not. It was showing on and off in concert with my George Forman grill heating cycles. It appears that my grill and my coffee pot have the same signature. The grill is labeled “760W” but the Hamilton Beach coffee maker has no label or specifications in the user manual. However, when it shows up on Sense, the usage is 700+ watts. I re-named the device to show both items.

This isn’t uncommon. Sometimes it gets better at IDing the correct appliance, other times it doesn’t. Sometimes it splits things like a coffee maker into two different devices (like mine, which I recently merged to get one device thanks to the new merge function) I tend to delete devices which are getting confused like that after a couple weeks, and see if it can find them again with better specificity.

I have the same thing with a coffee maker and toaster oven. To be fair, they use the same power outlet and my sense has only been running for 6 days.

I have has Sense for about 6 weeks and it see a toaster oven, hot hot fryer and a popcorn popper as the same appliance, I can understand this as each use about the same power. It also sees the fridge defrost(?) and crock pot as the same, but here the defrost runs 5-7 min about every 24hr where the crock pot cycles many times during the cooking time.

There is an option to say an appliance is not on, but not one to say it is on. I have two A/Cs same make but different models and does not say which is which, sometimes neither. Sometimes sense has it cut off while it is still running. Also it seams it records the same power used regardless of the outside temperature. High temp should be higher power usage, but it just movers it over to Other.

What do you mean by power usage?. A single stage AC unit will draw about the same amount of power regardless of the outside temperature. It just runs longer when it is hotter outside. (A multi-stage unit should draw a varying amount of power, assuming it was correctly sized). It will use the same kW but more kWh when it is hotter.

Higher temperature means higher head pressure which means more KW to run the compressor. At least that is my understanding, I have put an amp meter on the units and have confirmed lower temperature draws less KW. If I remember right it could be up to 15% difference. I hope this helps.

Sorry to hear about the device conflation you’re experiencing. This unfortunately does sometimes happen. As Sense see more cycles of the device, it is possible that it will be able to fully separate the conflated devices. This issue is also something our data science team is aware of and as algorithms are improved, these conflations will happen less and less.

Ben, can you give us some guidance on what to do in those cases? NJHaley suggested to delete the devices so they can be rediscovered. Is that better than to just wait? Thanks!

@martin.scheyhing, it can honestly depend on the particular home/situation. Generally speaking, deleting a device being conflated in that way could lead to improved detection of it, but it isn’t that likely. Ultimately, this issue will be need to be addressed by improvements to detection algorithms. Deleting the device in the meantime is something you can try if you don’t mind waiting for it to be re-detected.

1 Like

Thanks, Ben. I’ll give it a shot.

I have two small fridge behind my bar and they both show up as the same device when either of them turns on. Strange thing to me is when one of them turns on it shows up on Sense but if the other one turns on at the same time it doesn’t show up. I deleted the identified one in hopes they get discovered as different devices. Not much else I can do as far as I can see.

Rex, right now that is the best option. It’s also possible that the more Sense sees those devices it be able to separate them. Sorry about that!

Our oven and coffee maker are constantly confused with each other. The Tech folks are aware of it, but every effort to sort this out seems not to work.

On the other hand, in this new house (6 yrs old) with 16+ ceiling LED light fixtures (all the same model purchased the same day) there are three sets of three fixtures controlled by a switch. Sense can distinguish between two of these and identify the room they are in, but not the third. And it has not identified some solitary fixtures.

The first issue is frustrating. The second fascinating/curious.

1 Like