Detecting Electric Vehicle (EV) devices

Do you have or thought about a 240 charger or 240 adapter to convert from 120? I personally don’t have an EV but it’s pretty clear by the May posts on this subject that luck is better with 240. I have yet to read where someone has had a 120 detected.
I do know the sell and adapter for virtually every EV ever produced.

I have a 2017 e-Golf and charge it with a JuiceBox 40A power source.

Although I have only had Sense running for less than a month. Still eagerly awaiting detection. It’s a lease though, so it will go away at the end of the year. Still deciding what to replace it with.

I’ve had my Sense installed only since March 15, and last night it finally detected my 2014 Chevy Volt, that I use a Clipper Creek LCS20 240v charger to charge (mainly at night). I need to give it more time of course, but it only detected part of my charge last night, and nothing from this morning (doing a preheat while plugged in).

Hopefully it gets better :slight_smile:

I currently have a Clipper Creek LCS20 Level 2 (240v) charger to charge my 2014 Volt, but I ordered an OpenEVSE that I’ll install soon, so hopefully my current detection won’t change (I don’t think it should; it just opens/closes a large contactor to allow the car’s on board charger to do it’s thing).

I agree that it would be perfect if Sense would integrate the wireless integration of the OpenEVSE data recording/reporting that it has to better allow for better detection of EV charging.

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I enjoy the openevse and the wifi control interface. I’m interested to learn if your installation interferes with detection and I agree it is a simple contactor. The OpenEVSE does provide control over the pilot signal so you can set the charging current available and there is the ability to set the charging start time or the amount of energy you need to deliver. If you decide to use the timers I suggest you ask for the OpenEVSE firmware to be updated from 4.8.0 to 5.0.1 and use the wifi firmware 2.8.0 which you can install over the wifi connection. I use the timer in the car since my OpenEVSE firmware is 4.8.0 and I understand has a problem with the timer and accumulated kwhr reading that is corrected in 5.0.1. Good luck with the OpenEVSE installation. I’ve had no problems with the OpenEVSE 40A installation and have moved it from inside to outside location. The sense hasn’t detected my EV probably due to the moving changing the detection signature and the upgrade of the 70 year old wiring.

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Using the clipper creek @240V may be what’s causing your issue. I know exactly what you’re doing to accomplish that (I had a CC and did the exact same for some time) but it could be the 12A thing (vs the actual 16A using a proper L2 EVSE vs the CC adapted to “mostly” L2) that could be messing with the detection algorithms.

In order words, Sense is looking for the Volt expecting to see a certain amperage that would indicate one charging at L2. The adapted Clipper Creek EVSE solution isn’t providing the amperage draw that Sense would be expecting to see, so it may simply be tossing out the data accordingly.

Consider upgrading to one of the real 16A L2 solutions - you can get a Duosida 16A EVSE or only a few hundred bucks on Amazon for example. For what I sold my Clipper Creek for, I upgraded to full 16A charging with a Duosida. :wink:

Thanks for the thoughts. I seem to recall others have had detection with two phase 12A charging. Sense does not seem to “combine phases” much in its machine analysis, which means sometime people get half of the full load detected. So I’m skeptical that’s the problem. But the Level 2 chargers have indeed dropped a lot since I last looked!

The specific 16A models (which is all you need for a Volt anyways) are certainly inexpensive. I’ve seen them down below $200 on Amazon.

Just wanted to add that I replaced my Clipper Creek LCS20 with an OpenEVSE charger this weekend, and Sense is still picking up my 2014 Volt charging, although it still doesn’t seem to pick up the entire charge cycle.

Another vote for detection support of the chevy Bolt, I do see in this thread that @RyanAtSense says that the volt/bolt detection is launched, so I am happy to help with any additional data that could assist refinement of the detection, personally I have so far only charged three times since installing Sense so I may just need more samples

Sense really needs to see quite a few cycles to properly detect an EV. It’s hard to quantify that, but give it some more time. We have successful Bolt detections, so it will likely come online eventually.

I just got my Sense installed last week, and I’ve been totally geeking out on it! I have a 15kW solar system, a 2012 Tesla Model S, and a 2018 Tesla Model 3. I charge both vehicles at atypical currents, due to the configuration of existing outlets in my garage.

We have a NEMA 14-50 on the side of the garage where the Model S is parked, and a NEMA 10-30 where the Model 3 is parked. I had a 10-30 adapter for my Model S charger, so we use the Model S charger to charge the Model 3 on the NEMA 10-30, and it charges using 240V@24A. The Model S uses the Model 3 charger with the NEMA 14-50 outlet, which charges using 240V@32A.

These charge rates are atypical for both cars, and the cars are using the opposite chargers. Will Sense still be able to detect both?

Welcome jsierra! I would expect them to get detected, I don’t think the plug will matter too much and the amps should fall within the ramp up just fine.

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As @ptmoore noted, the charging method — as long as it’s 240V/L2 — really shouldn’t make a difference.

Wow! THAT was a painful thread to read. Everyone complaining that they can tell when their car is charging but Sense cannot. The real question is, can you tell exactly how much electricity your car is using to charge? No, you just see a hump of power is being used. Sense wants to build a model that can tell precisely when the charger comes on and exactly how much power is used for it every millisecond, give them some time to iron it out.

For those who struggle with getting a 240v device to register how much power is being used, this is what I used to use before I got the Sense:

It displays the volts and the amps and accumulates the kW/h’s so you will know where a certain amount of energy went. Less than $20!

Most recently I have purchased the Sense solar clamps so I can track each of my 240v circuits individually. While it is clamped on a circuit I can tell exactly how much power is going down that wire and it tells me averages and dollar figures. It does confuse the total bill by the amount of the circuit you are tracking, but it gives me a view into my panel NOW that I cannot get with the Kasa 120v plugs and I can use it for solar later.

Might be nice if Sense could use that data to identify devices, but it still doesn’t use the Kasa data to identify devices. Sense is a work in progress and it’s currently the best game in town, no pun intended.

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Unfortunately, almost half of the reviews report infant mortality failures.

Also, seems to be a “TTL serial connection”, which is pretty antique. Getting from there to the network, much less to a monitoring application (like Sense), would be a MAJOR task.

But, for the price, if they were reliable, it would be a really great device!

Thanks for understanding the challenge. Still, to be fair, we get that there’s an expectation that it just works and that’s a fair expectation to have. We’re working hard now to do a better job of managing those expectations upfront. The core sciences beyond Sense is still in its infancy, compared to speech recognition. Perfect results will take time (granted, my experiences with speech recognition are still far from perfect), but we’re making improvements constantly. Based on our data, EV recognition is drastically improved over where it was when models were first released. We’re proud of that level of improvement, but not complacent. We’re continuing to refine models and will not stop doing so.

I have had sense for 7 months and own a 2012 Nissan Leaf. Should the EV get detected by now?

Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter of time passed. There’s a lot of factors that feed into whether or not a device gets detected. For EVs, Sense needs to see a lot of data and that means frequent full charge cycles, not little top offs here and there. If you reach out to the Support team, they can dig into your data a bit and tell you more.

https://www.sense.com/contact

I depleted the battery almost entirely and topped off 5 days a week for 7 months. So, it sounds like something isn’t right. I have tried both Level 1 and Level 2 charging.