Changing scales in trends between previous period and current

#1

SSo you go to trends and select week. Everything looks fine except, whoa! The last day of last week used much less than every day this week. Until I swipe right and realize the scale for last week is 5kwh and the scale for this week is 2 kWh… why? Why not have everything that appears in the same display at the same scale. And if I swipe to the right to view last week, then change the scale displayed to 5 for that week and the days of the next week and previous that are also shown…

It would be much less confusing that way.i mean sure, i should not be concerned with that day because I’m in week view. Switch to month view. But it is there, on the screen, causing a gut reaction that something changed from last week to this week and it it takes a second to calm the alarm…

#2

This is done intentionally to adapt to peak usage in that time period. You’ll see the same behavior in the other time periods. I’m swiping across my last week right now and I even have a 20kWh scale on one day. You can image that if you had a peak usage of 50kWh in a day, a scale up to 5kWh wouldn’t quite work. But you also wouldn’t want to have the peak always be 100kWh either. The best choice here then seems to be having it adapt based on your actual usage, even if it can be confusing at times. We’re looking into some UX ways to make the change more obvious.

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#3

I know that it was done intentionally, and so I intentionally addressed it in my post. I think you are confused as to what my point was, so allow me to reexplain. It is foolish too have Monday - Sunday on the screen at 40 kWh and display Sunday on the left and a Monday on the right at completely different scales. Just don’t show them at all. It serves no useful or practical purpose to show the last day of the previous week if it is going to have a different scale. Why not set a different scale for every day in the week.

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Whoa! Last Sunday I used massive amounts of energy! Oh wait last week the scale is 20 kWh and I actually used less energy. Oh I can’t tell because the scale changed and I have to go to month view. In reality that Sunday was 14.3 kWh and the Monday is 8.3 kWh. But because of the scaling, it appears I used 3-4 times as much energy on Sunday than monday

Now what I am proposing is that Sunday and Monday on either side be shown at the same 40 kWh scale so I can compare them usefully. Then when I swipe to the previous week, it will change the scale accordingly to reflect a scale useful for that week and a day either side of it. If my peak usage last Sunday was 50 kWh and my peak this week is 40, then adjust the scale to accommodate as if the peak was 50. Or if you are expecting something outrageous like 50 vs 5, which I don’t, then have the option to display the value of the bar, or hide it completely.

There’s no reason why not. Sunday’s bar should be about twice the height of Monday. And when I swipe to last week and the scale changes to 20 kWh, that bar on the right representing next weeks Monday ought to be scaled to be roughly half of Sunday

Whatever the proper solution is, whether you change the scale, label the value to those outside bars. Or remove them completely. the current, intentional, design is unintuitive and not useful. I don’t mean offense, but it isn’t very smart.

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#4

Yup, I definitely misunderstood. But that makes perfect sense. I can see how it’s confusing. I’ll pass your feedback onto the Product team to see how your idea meshes with their plans.

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#5

I hate to be a pest, but for what I spent, I shouldn’t have to long for the day when I can throw the app away so I can do data analysis the right way with a google spreadsheet and a script.

#6

@Grandpa2390,

Took me a few minutes to figure out what you were talking about as well, because I never noticed the mostly blacked out bars for the preceding Sunday and subsequent Monday. But thanks for pointing out and making the point that they should be in the current scale rather than the preceding week’s scale and the next week’s scale for them to be of any use.

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#7

When I posted originally, I wasn’t abl to put pictures. Pictures always help.

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I haven’t encountered this issue much lately as the ac keeps me At at 21-24 kWh at least once a week. But come September-October… the scale out to be flipping between 20 and 40 for me.

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#8

@Grandpa2390,
If you truly want to do data analysis your own way, then I have a couple of suggestions.

  • Learn the R language. Far better than any spreadsheet, uses .csv’s and free.
  • Use R-Selenium package to scape the data directly from the utilization pages of Sense web app. I can give you a simple R script that logs in, allows you to traverse to any month you want and have the data dumped to a .csv.
  • But the new power meter page is entirely different - scraping it is fairly intractable. Lots of graphic data but no real information.
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#9

Ok well good. I’m glad it was my explanation that was the fault.

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#10

Everything I need to know is potentially in the app. For my needs. My needs are very basic. That’s what makes this frustrating to me. Lol

The app just needs a bit of tweaking. I don’t have any need to do any “serious” analysis. I’m not a scientist. I just want the data to be presented to me in a useful and intuitive way.

The usage graph here is good enough. It gives me, or I would like it to give me, a quick glance view at how one day compared to another. My Thermostat gives me info concerning why my AC ran more or less.

One day I’m going to finally set up a weather station outside my house. So I can get accurate information for why my dehumidifier or AC ran more or less. But until then I just need basic information presented in a way that is usable for simple purposes like, how much more did it cost me to run my AC at 80 last night instead of 83. Assuming average weather

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