The frequency of the waveform will never change since it is running off of grid power which should be at 60Hz and what Sense is looking for is the change in load that your devices are putting on the grid power coming in and that is what gives it is unique waveforms from device to device. As a device or motor turns on it puts a large load on the grid to charge caps or start up motors because of the initial load and as these devices are running they create a unique waveform as the motor and the polarized and non polarized components in the devices charge and discharge or pass electricity to work. obviously it will be harder for Sense to detect motors with variable speeds now but iâm sure once they start to improve on it and it Sense starts to learn what the waveform looks like under all conditions it will only get better.
I donât believe sense knows or can identify a device while running unless it has first seen the startup waveform. Earlier today I had a data dropout with may detected devices running. The data stream was restored but sense didnât recognize anything and put all my usage under âotherâ. I didnât even have âalways onâ for awhile.
That tells me that the waveform for startup and shutdown or on/off is the most important part of device detection and recognition.
Yeah thats what i was getting at. right now with devices that have variable speed motors or ramp usage up or down depending on what the device needs seems to be what is holding Sense back right now. My EV has a very distinctive on cycle but once it gets to about 80-90% charged it starts to ramp down the usage and slows down the charge cycle to better help with cell balance and better charge and that is when Sense drops detection and says my car stopped charging even though it still has about an hour and a half left. Once Sense is able to pick different waveform characteristics it should be able to pick out devices that were already on. Right now it seems that it is only looking for very specific on/off cycles to detect devices and doesnât understand what is in the middle.
My previous reply is also why i added the smart plugs to my house because i want to know exactly what each device is using and i want it to capture the beginning, middle and end. If Sense adds smart switches and receptacles to its connected device list then i will start replacing them in my house one at a time UNLESS Sense becomes smart enough to detect everything on its own and the smart plugs become obsolete with Sense.
While the grid power is single phase 60 HZ, the pump controller generates three phase variable frequency power for the pump motor. So the current waveform reflects that. Sense engineering tells me that they canât cope with that.
Sense doesnât measure the output voltage to the unit just like any other device so the output phase shouldnât matter at all. The problem is that your pump needs three phase output and is using 35 watts at idle to keep whatever power supply its using to run the pump with the correct voltage so youâre never going to see it turn off and it will probably look like a computer on the other side of a conditioned UPS only bigger. From that it looks like your pump never truly turns off and without those on/off detectionâs sense will have a hard time finding your pump.
This is what a lot of us thought we were getting into. Not that it would detect everything but the www.sense.com site doesnât let people know about the difficulties. I believe we are in the âChasmâ @kevin1 articulated so well and we are all beta testers in a way.
Iâve grown to be somewhat comfortable with it.
Mine uses 7 watts at idle and I donât agree with that being the cause of no detection. Example, my garage door openers use 7ish watts each at idle, yet Sense is very good at catching them when activated. Even a 35 watt standby would be trumped easily by seeing the VFD kick on at 100% until itâs at itâs programmed ârunning PSI.â
Speaking from my VFD, itâs not truly constant otherwise itâd cycle every time a faucet is cracked for a couple seconds. They have a âwake up differentialâ which on mine is a user programmable input.
@andyâs controller might be set âtightâ to where itâs super sensitive to psi changes, therefore changing itâs frequency all the time. The other thing that may be causing constant changes is it checking PSI loss to make sure something is still drawing water, so an overactive sleep setting causes MUCH more activity.
Never heard about âwake up differentialâ, so thatâs something I need to check into. In our home, even a single faucet turned on for more than a few seconds causes the pump to turn on (also slightly), then run for a bit after the faucet is shut. The pump doesnât run at all when weâre not drawing water, controller of course has a very small idle current.
Thanks
I know that a lot of people are upset that Sense doesnât mention the difficulties about device detection and for me if i saw that on their website I would have probably not purchased a Sense monitor and tried to go a different way BUT looking back on it with what I know now about Sense I am glad I didnât know and got a chance to buy this and I absolutely love having Sense installed in my house and even more happy to be apart of it becoming a bigger and better service as a whole. I am even more impressed at how much has been improved in the less than two months that I have been a Sense user and owner. I keep saying this but honestly I cant say enough good things about this little device and the company itself and I have learned more about my house using this device than I could have without it and it has been worth every penny.
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