Detecting Electric Vehicle (EV) devices

The messages / requests between your Tesla and the Tesla mothership are encrypted from the car onward, so there’s no way Sense can listen in on them. You get your messages from the Tesla mothership.

re: tesla messages/notification regarding charging

let’s assume then that i can intercept these messages (via Tasker or webhook, neither of which i’ve studied yet) and interface that to IFTTT. since IFTTT has an interface to Sense, shouldn’t i be able to hack up an application that sends the Tesla charging info to IFTTT and have IFTTT communicate that info with Sense?

if i get that info into IFTTT, what does IFTTT have to do to tell Sense?

any experts on Tasker and/or IFTTT here?

I don’t know how you would do either piece of that. None of the Sense applets have a input path for amending Sense data.

The only options for supplementing Sense mothership seem to be:

  • spoof the behavior on an existing integration (Kasa, Wemo, Hue) to offer a new device data stream. @dpt was investigating this route here
  • Use a second Sense or the auxiliary port on your Sense. But a second Sense won’t combine the data into a single account, and the aux port on the Sense is only allowed a fixed set of monitoring/combining functions today (solar, generator, dual panel)
  • Merge the data outside of Sense using export. I do this to enhance my charging data for a weekly usage plot.

You can Tesla get charging data from apps like TeslaFi that do use the Tesla API and OAuth 2.0 Authentication.

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I have 2 Chevy Volt’s, plugged in daily since Jan 2021. One Volt is drawing about 3300w using the Siemens 30A evse, while the 2nd Volt is drawing about ~2930w using the OEM charger (@240v). After about 1 month, Sense detected “EV car” when either Volt was plugged in. However, Sense acted weird and not correctly displaying energy used when both Volts were plugged in & charging … for example, Sense was displaying the energy usage, 3300w, while the first Volt was charging. Then when the second Volt was plugged in to charge (its battery was almost full and only requiring topping off so energy drawn was stepping down) Sense then was displaying the watts for the second Volt’s charging only and nothing for the first Volt. So Sense did not see 2 separate Volt’s … can someone from Sense shred some light on this issue … I already deleted the detected “EV car” and hoped Sense would relearn 2 separate EV cars … but so far after 2 months nothing yet …

Can’t shed direct, specific light on Volt detections, but EVs in general are challenging detections for 3 reasons.

  • They are outside the traditional Sense 1-second transition window, because they have relatively slow ramps in comparison.
  • Each on and off ramp waveform is unique based on car, plus possibly charger and charge limits.
  • On and off ramp waveforms can even vary between EV software updates.

I don’t know how Sense handles all the variants, but I’m betting OEM chargers and the most popular third-party chargers (i.e. Chargepoint, JuiceBox) are the first in line, if specific flavors of models are needed. The blog below gives a lot more insight:

Gonna update my comments since the last discussion. There are now two relatively reasonable ways to feed EV info back to Sense, if Sense isn’t picking up EV charging via native detections.

  1. use Direct Circuit Monitoring (DCM). Most 240V EV chargers are balanced (no neutral) so you can actually monitor 2 240V EVs (or another 120V or 240V-balanced load) using DCM. And if you have solar, like me, you can use a second Sense for the DCM monitoring and combine data post-Sense using a variety of methods.

  2. use SenseLink to feed EV charging data from Home Assistant back to Sense. Home Assistant has multiple EV charging integrations. I can pull charging current and voltage from my Tesla’s via the Tesla integration and produce power data. I haven’t done it yet, but that data can be fed back to Sense via SenseLink which emulates the behavior of Kasa plugs.

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I searched for Tesla Model 3 and only found a few reference back to 2018. Just wondering if the connector is up and running for the 2020 Model 3

When you say “connector”, what do you mean ? The HPWC (high power wall connector) ? I can tell you that Sense is “detecting” my 2018 Model 3 LR on HPWC (@48A). Not sure if the charge profile changes for 2020 if we are on the same software rev, though charge profile might vary based on battery size or based on charge limit.

The charge profile is going to vary based on software revision as well as potential hardware variations over time. Even though our Model 3 (a 2018) and Model Y (a 2020) both have the same 75kWh battery, same 48amp onboard charger, are on the same software version, and use the same Tesla Wall Connector, the 3 has been picked up but the Y isn’t being recognized yet. It sometime picks up as the Model 3 but it doesn’t stay recognized for more than a couple of minutes.

It’s the nature of the beast. I am working on converting my Raspberry PI that was running Homebridge to run Home Assistant so I can use the beta Kasa emulator to feed Sense data on both Tesla chargers and hopefully get more accurate detection. I can’t imagine that both cars with very similar, yet different charging ramp up/down are very easy at all to detect accurately without confusing the machine learning thinking it is the same EV with ever changing signature.

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I have been experimenting with Home Assistant and the Influxdb and Grafana add-ons for pulling together energy data from 2 Senses (one main w solar, one that I use for DCM) , 2 Ecobees, plus 2 car chargers, so far with reasonable success. I have a dashboard that looks at Total Usage and Solar vs. both EVs via multiple sources. But each source has its own limitations.

I have two sources for Model S usage (the middle chart), native Sense detections (green) and the charger inside the car (orange). The Sense picks up most of the charging sessions at my home, but misses a few (bright green circle), plus only attributes about 1/3 of the actual power/energy usage. The charger in the car, includes charging that isn’t at home (blue circle), plus occasionally goes offline (red circle)

I have 3 sources for the Model 3, Sense native detections (orange), Sense DCM (green) and the car charger (blue). I haven’t been charging that one much, but when I do have a reasonable charge length, all three line up beautifully. But I had a string of short charges around 4/8-4/9. Looking closely at them, the charger missed them all because Home Assistant sampling for the Teslas is set to every 15min to prevent drain on the car. Plus Sense picked ups few spurious spikes if I use DCM as the golden measure.

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Sorry about the confusing language. Overall, I was referencing a charging profile. I have a 2020 Tesla Model 3 LR AWD and charge nightly using a 14-50 outlet and the Tesla mobile charger to charge at 32a.

I am hoping that Sense has the profile developed and it is simply time that will allow Sense detect my Tesla.

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It should be able to find your Model 3 given time. Your charging profile using the 14-50 outlet and mobile connector will be different than the profile for my vehicles using the HPWC on a 60 amp circuit. The ramp profiles should be nearly identical, but yours will top at 32 amps where mine will continue to ramp to 48 amps. Both the mobile connector and the HPWC are both just conduits to get electricity to the onboard charger which handles the AC to DC conversion to charge the batteries and the appropriate DC amperage and voltage.

Thank you for the information. I have only had the Sense for a month, and it is still plugging along discovering devices. I hope it picks up my Tesla as it only charges overnight, and has a pretty specific profile with very little background noise when it hits at 2-3am consistently.

In other sense news, it just found my microwave yesterday afternoon, and within minutes of that notification, Started getting notifications that my Keurig was going on and off… I got 11+ alerts in a 20 minute timeframe… As I kept getting notifications for the Keurig, I started getting worried about the amount of coffee my wife may be consuming as HAHAHA… then I realized it was the cycling of the main oven heating element that Sense was mis-interpreting as the Keurig. I hope that works itself out over time too.

I installed my Sense in late January and my Model 3 was identified 2 or 3 days ago. It does a lot of charging while not at home (It is my side income gig on Turo). My Model Y charges more often. Right now it seems both vehicles are being picked up by the same identification, though the Model Y doesn’t activate the charging bubble like the Model 3 does.

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Thanks for the info… looks like it is a time game for me. How are you charging your Model 23 when you are home? Via mobile charger or HPWC?

Both cars are charged with the single HPWC. I do have a mobile connector plugged into a regular 15 amp 120v outlet but that’s just for when one of the car is going to sit for a period. Otherwise it is so quick and easy to swap the HPWC from car to car that I never find that we are in a time squeeze or would need to charge both Tesla’s at the same time.

One more view on multi-source data. This is Sense Total Usage and Solar data, overlaid with Model S charger data and Model 3 DCM data courtesy of my second Sense monitor. You’ll notice that the Model S charger data is slightly delayed due to the 15 min sampling period.

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That is awesome. I am using a standard 14-50 outlet and the mobile charger. Hoping to see that “sense discovered a new device” each morning.

Adding to @kevin1’s post on April 12, there are also the option to tap into specific EV chargers as well. I use the ChargePoint CPH50 Flex charger to charge my EV, and CharePoint has a “Connections” API that allows organizations owning charging stations to offer deals by getting access to charing data. That’s how my utility provider keeps tracks that I am actually charging the way I’m supposed to. But this data should include past charging information and would be gold worth if it could be correlated with Sense’s energy usage data - it would help identify charing stations energy usage, and also help with the use case where a vehicle might just be plugged in and waiting to charge.

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We’re working on something now that covers some of the things you’ve mentioned @johannes. I think it’s safe to say you’ll be seeing something from us within the next few months.

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