I like the idea that I have go into my home details and I can add devices to my device inventory before they are ever discovered but what I don’t like is how the smart plugs are integrated with Sense. I really think it would work much better if the data that is being collected by the smart plugs were added to the devices profile and not to the plug itself. The idea would be that when Sense detects a smart plug it would as you what device is plugged into it and then that data gets stored under the device and lets say you move the plug to a new device that has a completely different signature then it would be nice if Sense would see this change and at this point not store the information directly to the device and would prompt you and ask if the plug was moved and if it was then have you assign a new device to it and thats where the new data is stored. This would also be good if say your device started failing and Sense would detect this new signature and again prompt you to look at the signature to verify if it still plugged in to the correct device or if there is an issue with the device or maybe it just did something that it hadn’t previously done before i.e. refrigerator defrost turned on and hadn’t turned on before while plugged into the smart plug. Just my $.02
Great suggestion!
I do not have any smart plug yet, but will certainly not buy one knowing how it is integrated with Sense.
The catch I’ve found is that although I have a bunch of smart plug, none of them are Sense compatible. About 40 of them are the Iris ones that record power use on their own but to not report it to sense.
What I’m waiting for is to see if sense will see the devices even though they are plugged into another device.
Now that could cause issues.
@trlinde, usually, smart plugs connect their outlet to the line voltage via a relay, so a device plugged into a smart plug looks just like the device on its own. Sense has a way of trying to avoid new detections of a device on a compatible (Kasa/Wemo) smart plug, but that probably comes from using the edge detection from the smart plug to mask on/off signatures coincident with the power transitions on the Kasa/Wemo smart plug.
I had similar thoughts here: