Today I found another reason why marking devices inactive would be useful. I’ll have to give a little background to explain.
I had native detections for both my clothes washer and clothes dryer, and both worked well. Last week I replaced both laundry machines. The native detection for the clothes washer actually worked immediately, which was wonderful. The dryer was not so lucky, however. Since I knew that dryer was gone for good, I deleted the device after saving a copy of the data.
Today Sense proudly announced that it had discovered Motor 3. Usage patterns for this motor looked suspiciously like the clothes dryer, so I charted the usage of each. They overlapped very well, so it is confirmed that Motor 3 matches the original dryer definition.
As illustrated by this example, the ability to mark a device inactive would allow the Artificial Intelligence engine to not waste its time (and mine) re-detecting devices that are gone. Did I mishandle how I communicated to Sense the replacement of my clothes dryer?