Basic KP115 question - Can I use it to train Sense, then move it?

So - got my first smart plug. Once Sense finds this and monitors it for awhile, if I remove the smart plug and plug the device straight into power again, will sense still know what it is?.. thanks

Hey there. At this time, Sense requires that the device is plugged into the smart plug to maintain smart plug detections.

Ok, thank you.

I have no experience with devices hooked up to the smart plugsā€¦ But my understanding is that Sense is detecting the smart plugā€¦not the deviceā€¦ Am I right?

So if you remove the device, it hasnā€™t lost itā€™s ability to find the smart plugā€¦ Itā€™ll still recognize the smart plug, and any new device you attach it toā€¦

Further, the smart plug does not ā€œhelpā€ or accelerate Sense detect the device on the other end of the smart plugā€¦ Because it actually hasnā€™t detected or recognized the device itselfā€¦ In that respect the ā€œdevice detectionā€ was not very smartā€¦it is just a passthrough through the smart plugā€¦

Do I have that right? Again, forgive my ignorance on this topicā€¦ I have no experience here, just my perceptions and assumptionsā€¦ :slight_smile:

This is correct @MikeekiM.

Depends on your definition of ā€œhelpā€. If weā€™re talking strictly about how smart plug devices play into the detection algorithm, youā€™re correct.
If weā€™re talking about the larger picture, the Data Science team refers to smart plug data along with dedicated circuit devices to provide us with valuable ground-truth data to reference for various utilizations.

In this way, Sense is looking at the power signatures and is creating profiles, or whatever, on the back end for devices?

In other words, the smart plug does not prevent the sense backend machine learning from doing itā€™s jobā€¦it will attempt to detect the device as it would normally do with or without the smart plugā€¦ But the fact that it is attached to a smart plug does not make it any easier or harder for the machine learning to detect and identify itā€¦

That is what I meant by my comment that it ā€œdoesnā€™t helpā€ā€¦ But it certainly doesnā€™t prevent eitherā€¦

Againā€¦do I have it right? :wink:

Smartplugs do more than more than just ā€œnot stopā€ detections. They help improve and build device models. The ground truth data (the waveform from the device(s) on the smartplug) can be used to develop, train and refine current and future models. I think @JustinAtSenseā€™s point is that model development is done by data scientists (humans) using the data in the long term, instead of the smarplug and the Sense back-end automagically creating or ā€œpulling a model from the libraryā€ based on that one device on the smartplug.

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I DO appreciate the responses and I am ā€œmildly interestedā€ in some of them. I find it a bit humorous too though. You guys enjoy the tech. You obviously have a passion for it. Iā€™m a ā€œuser.ā€ I want it to ā€œwork.ā€ Iā€™m glad I bought the thing BUT it is NOT ā€œas advertised.ā€ We are all BETA testers though and it cost us a fair bit to become those testers. IF this thing is ever as capable as the advertising implies I surely hope our devices are fully upgradeable OR that they are purchased back by the company and replaced with new equipment. - That said, Thanks again for the input. :wink:

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Understand your frustrations. I was an early user of facial recognition for photos - it was promising, but did not worked as advertised in the early days (10 years ago), continuously conflating peoples faces. But the datasets and machine learning improved as time went on, and I consistently rely on it today. It should be noted that the brains for Sense is not in the device, but in the big servers back at Senseā€™s mothership. So Iā€™m pretty sure your device is fully ā€œupgradableā€

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Perhaps one aspect weā€™re overlooking: It is possible that the electrical signature of any given device CHANGES when a smart plug is inserted. In essence, the smart plug is a relay, and itself has a signature. That signature is possibly ā€˜fasterā€™ than that of the device plugged in the smart plug, but nonetheless, the dynamics of the current/voltage are likely to be affected by the smart plug itself.

This to say that, whether you turn a device on/off from its main switch, or you keep the switch always on, then plug/unplug the power cord (by cycling the smart-plug), youā€™re likely to get slightly different signatures

Thoughts ?

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This is a very fair comparison. As Sense continues to improve machine learning capabilities, those improvements will extend to your device automatically via the mothership without the need for hardware replacement @frawgunderscore.

I can understand the frustration. At this point, thereā€™s some amount of responsibility that rests with the user to investigate some of the things Sense discovers. That being said, this is something weā€™re actively working on, specifically with the release of Dedicated Circuit Monitoring and our existing available integrations. Weā€™ve been working to improve the user experience by making it possible to fill in some of the current gaps in detection that users may run into. I know the phrase ā€œpatience is keyā€ is overused here, but things will only improve from their current state moving forward.

I wondered this also - and Iā€™ve wondered how much an electrical signal changes if you move a device around to different receptacles, circuits, - change a light bulb(?) etcā€¦ :thinking:

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Yeahā€¦ This was something in my mind as wellā€¦ I have a 60W incandescent bulb in both my freezer and refrigeratorā€¦ Both were detectedā€¦

If I change them to an LED bulb, will it still detect them? My guess is noā€¦

@drjb, that might be the case if the principal usage of a device is turning it on and off via the relay in the smartplug. But when the really is closed, and a device on the other side of the relay turns on, thereā€™s not likely to be much distortion seen by Sense vs. the direct connected device. If the connection is via an electronic ā€œswitchā€ (i.e. a power SCR or triac), thatā€™s a different story - those devices will likely distort the signatureā€¦

Some thoughtsā€¦

  • Changing incandescent lightbulbs, while keeping the same wattage - Sense will likely keep detecting
  • Changing incandescent lightbulbs, with different wattage - Sense will likely detect a new device
  • Changing incandescent lightbulbs, with an LED - Sense will likely detect a new device, or even never detect given the amount of other activity in the house.
  • Plug a device into a different outlet, but on the same leg (L1 or L2) - Sense will likely keep detecting
  • Plug a device into a different outlet, but on the opposite leg (L1 or L2) - Sense will likely detect a new device ?
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I have used the HS110 in the past for power monitoring, just not with Sense as much.So I am interested to know if KP-115can be used to train sense, to detect new devices, and then to move to another device, and so on. If so, how long would be the time for the device to be detected.

Hi @sritodi. The short answer is no, but the question has been answered in more detail further up the comments here:

I was wondering about this myself. About a year ago Sense detected my refrigerator but Iā€™ve wondered about the accuracy so today I pulled the fridge and plugged it into a kp115. It still showed the refrigerator as using power AND the kp115 . I told Sense that a refrigerator was plugged into the kp115 thinking maybe itā€™d stop double reporting then I changed the kp115 to ā€œotherā€. Now it shows usage for the kp115 but none for the fridge?

So now itā€™s reporting 130W for the kp115 and 145W for the refrigerator thatā€™s plugged into it. Makes no Sense.