A couple weeks ago, I got a notification that Sense detected a new device. A refrigerator, which was connected to my TP-LINK Power Monitoring Plug ( KP115 if I am not wrong). This was a little strange, as the device was already detected in the past.
I just labeled it and then moved on. A couple of days later I realized that my refrigerator was broken, and the cooling was failing altogether. This is not the first time Sense has been identified as a failure as a ‘new device’ . I have a love-hate relationship with Sense now. Because every time Sense detects something I get excited like a 5-year-old, and then I learn that was trying to tell me that something was broken.
So I check the back of the refrigerator to see that the consensing fan is not stopped [motor stall was NOT detected] and needed to be replaced. I realized that the replacement fan came faster than an appliance repair service technician and so I was able to replace it.
Now, with the fan fixed, my refrigerator worked for 2-hours before the Capacitor went bad , luckily I had a relay+capacitor at hand because that’s what I thought had gone bad. So I was able to get the refrigerator working as intended.
Interestingly, I then had a new issue with the refrigerator which caused the automatic defrosting ( I would call it scheduled defrosting rather) was failing. So I ended-up using a hair-dryer to melt the snow/ice in the back of the freezer to keep my refrigerator cool. The appliance repair technician mentioned that the main-board needs to be replaced and was NOT in stock
Luckily, a hair dryer meant I don’t have to bother about spoilt food, as I kept manual defrosting as a workaround while I got a replacement card from EBAY
Things like a refrigerator do need 4+ hours of run time to know about the actual working. This could also be true for air conditioners
Now comes the feature request
Daily comparison, I noticed that I can on my phone zoom and traverse time, but I cannot necessarily compare day 1 to day 2 and say if my defrost timer runs every day at about 11 AM, I cannot compare it, unless I keep scrolling and keeping an eye on date/time/usage and then taking notes of the same.
Unfortunately, I noticed that on my browser, I cannot see the power usage but can see it in the Android App ( I believe I can see it on the IOS app too).
If I had a daily-usage comparison view, I could have saved time in troubleshooting the capacitor issue within minutes, not to mention being able to also identify the defrost issue.