Will Sense learn my TV’s?

I’m wondering if Sense will learn my TV’s. Last night my “unknown” devices were all turned off. I turned on my TV (with sound bar) and unknown jumped to 58 Watts. Turned it back off and unknown returned to “off”. Repeated this a few times.

So it’s pretty clear to me that these 58 watts are my TV and sound bar. Will sense eventually learn my TV? Or is it not good at picking up this signature? I use my TV once every day and so far sense hasn’t identified it yet.

A related question: I use the harmony hub to turn on my TV activities. That means the tv in the bedroom will always turn on/off together with the sound bar at the TV in the living room will always turn on/off with Denon Receiver (Dolby Atmos) and two subwoofers. Does that mean Sense will never be able to learn to recognize the receiver and subwoofers separate from my TV since they always turn on/off together?

Hasn’t picked up any of my LED TV’s or sound system in ~1.5 years.

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Oh really? That’s disappointing. Especially since these TV’s are also network devices and Sense allegedly listens to network activity. Can anyone from engineering weigh in on this?

I have 3 Samsung LED TVs and it has found all 3, likely as they are also smart networked devices and I have data sources turned on.

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It has occurred to me while reading these very different experiences that we don’t know whether putting Sense on a different subnet to the smart devices in question will result in it not being able to track power on / off activity by network activity.

We can unwittingly do this by setting up an additional router to provide coverage tor Sense, just as an example.

I wonder if @BradAtSense can advise if this matters.

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You seem to be way smarter about this than I am, Dave, but here’s my experience. I have Sense on our standard router provided by CenturyLink. I have my television linked to another router run though the standard router. We have lots of wireless devices and I can’t keep them all connected so we bought the second access point to help. The TV may even be on the 5ghz band, I can’t remember.

Sense picked up my TV in about a week - but it’s not fool-proof. If we’re watching TV for a while, there’ll be breaks where Sense is calling it off. I don’t know if that corresponds to commercials or if it’s just random. You can kinda see that in this screencap below:

Great questions here @philipp.eierund!

In our research, the consumption profiles of televisions, amplifiers, and powered speakers vary quite a bit depending on how they’re being used, the dynamic range of program material being viewed or listened to, etc.
For example: consumption by a television can change depending on how bright or dark the image is. Consumption of a sound bar, amplifier, or powered speaker can change depending on how loud or soft the sound is, etc. The 58 watts you observed in your unknown bubble, was this constant throughout the duration of a television program, or just at the point of turning on the television and sound bar? Did the Power Meter view show fluctuations in consumption over time?

We’ve been working with NDI (Network Device Identification) to help discern when connected devices turn on or off depending on their Wi-Fi status, and then correlate that information to power consumption. We do have strong models developed for the Samsung televisions that @johndellarciprete mentioned, and are continuing to add more NDI based models over time. What brand/model of television are you using in this case? @aalyar - what kind of LED TVs are you using?

To your related question about the devices that turn on/off together, it’s a bit hard to tell quite yet. The challenges mentioned above still apply, but it’s possible that despite getting a single “on” or “off” message from your Harmony hub, each device powers up in a slightly different way, so they might be recognized distinctly in the future. However, there’s a good change that a model could get confused because the exact same on/off sequence occurs every time, and that sequence will look uniquely different from any models currently available for televisions, receivers, or powered subwoofers. These kinds of use cases will become more manageable over time for Sense, but your continued monitoring via the Power Meter view in the app will likely be the most accurate way to keep an eye on how much these devices use.

Sorry for any disappointment for you. We’ll keep working on new solutions to make this better!

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@BradAtSense - Two TCL and one Samsung.

  • Samsung UN50J5000 - used for 30 minutes a day while I exercise.
  • TCL 40FS3800 - used every morning for an hour while I get ready.
  • TCL 55US5800 - used for an average of 1-2 hours every evening/night.

@BradAtSense thanks for the insights. Much appreciate.

I have two Sony TV’s. 75Z9D connected via LAN and 65Z9D connected via WiFi.

Would love for those to show up!

In a year, Sense hasn’t found any of my electronics (except the laser printer), which include a half dozen computers (I work from home), three different large screen TV, stereos, DVRs, etc, etc. Since many/most of these are also on the network, I’d hoped that Sense would start to find them, but apparently the wireless works even worse than the rest of Sense…sigh.

I enabled NDI as soon as option was available. While I didn’t see any immediate results on my side I assumed it was an early release setting and there was magic going on behind the scenes- which I saw confirmation of in this forum. Very shortly after the release where sense announced they implemented it (made avail the models that had been generated to date) my 2016 LG Electronics 65UH7700 Smart TV was identified as a device- and not an unknown device, it had the brand name and some other info already populated which was reassuring. This was only one of my TVs however, also have a TCL smart TV like others here mention that hasn’t been picked up at all.

Also worth noting I have yet to have any other networked appliance ID since then. Some have come and gone, but I still have streamers (Apple, roku, firetv), router, waps, a managed switch, nas, all online. Plus computers left and right (usually on albeit in standby power modes most of the time). I thought I remember reading they were focusing on TVs first and other types to follow, but I would have thought that in all this time NDI would have revealed more than just the one TV.

I’m allowing the sense device to live on the same VLAN as all my data and multimedia, but if NDI isn’t really going to pan out, then i’m hoping to move it to the DMZ with my other IoT devices.

@BradAtSense Can you tell us whether the effectiveness of NDI is contingent on the devices using the same WiFi network as the Sense? My hunch is yes, and I ask because I have the Sense connected to a range extender with a different SSID than my main network, which my TV is connected to.

If that is the case, would matching the SSID on my range extender lead to device recognition?

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My TV is on a different SSID than my primary network, which Sense is connected to. About a week after plugging in our Samsung TV, it was found. Not reliably, as I noted above, but found nonetheless.

So my take away from this discussion is that my non network connected Samsung TV isnt going to be detected any time soon.

I would agree with that statement- If it’s not a smart TV, then I don’t see NDI doing anything to move this along.

My non-networked Plasma panels haven’t been picked up by sense either, but as Brad mentioned…

I think this is especially true on Plasma displays. Pwr draw and heat output both. My Power Meter looks like a roller coaster with those things on unless I hit pause… and because they’re plasma, dont want to stay paused too long unless you’d like that particular paused scene to be permanent.

Hi @Justin_time - good question

@NJHaley is correct here. NDI will listen to the broadcasts from any devices attached to the same subnet as your Sense monitor. As long as both Wi-Fi networks are integrated on to the same subnet within your home’s LAN, it should be able to detect devices that we currently have NDI models running for.

To your question about the SSID: it’s probably better that the range extender used with your Sense monitor keeps an independent SSID so that Sense doesn’t accidentally try to connect to your main network with limited signal strength. Does that make sense?

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Yes @dmagerl, that is the case for now, but we do have some other solutions in the pipeline that we hope might be able to help you with detection of your television soon!

Sense found my Samsung TV and identified it by model number after only a few weeks. All was going well until I decided to turn off the standby mode (which would change the power on footprint). Then it lost the TV. So, I changed it back to standby power on. Since then it has not been able to find the TV again.

Another question in this subject, is Sense affected by UPSs? I have all our TV’s (2 Samsung plasmas and a Vizio 4K LED) plugged unto UPSs, and none of them have been detected in the almost a year since we got our Sense. Could a UPS be keeping them from being detected?

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Similar question to @davidferri -

One of my TVs is plugged into a UPS; the others (and many of my other appliances) are plugged into Leviton surge protection receptacles like these:

Can these interfere with device detection?