Device Detection Report

Data Analysis
1

Since so many people seem to have issues w/ Device Detection I figured I’d start this topic to report my progress on detecting devices. I did just install my Sense 2 days ago (on 9/5 around 6:30 PM MST). After the initial 24 hours or so I linked my Hue hub to the the Sense as well, so from that it does now detect my 3 groups of Hue lights (unfortunately just the groups, not the individual lights). About 20 minutes ago it detected my first device on it’s own, my Fridge.

Running total of detected devices and approximately when they were detected:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
2

I had 3 more things detected yesterday. My AC and 2 Motors. 1 of them I determined to be the AC Fan, but the other motor I have no idea about yet. I’ve not been able to pinpoint it to something yet.

So running total of detected devices is now:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
  • AC - ± 96 hours
  • AC Fan - ± 96 hours
  • “Motor 2” - ± 96 hours
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3

I had an “Appliance Light” detected today. Not really sure yet which appliance light this may be as I got the notification when I just got to work. I’ll go play around tonight to see if I can figure out which appliance light it really is. I have quite a few appliances with lights. I’m also thinking it may even be one of my “night lights” that I have scattered around the house (hallway, bathrooms) as well (my kids are afraid if it’s too dark when they have to use the bathroom at night).

So running total of detected devices is now:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
  • AC - ± 96 hours
  • AC Fan - ± 96 hours
  • “Motor 2” - ± 96 hours
  • Appliance Light - ± 1 week
4

I had an appliance light detected too… it turned out to be the LED light in my fridge. It is the only appliance light that has been detected in a year, and uses so little power I can’t believe it was found. I do think it’s funny though, since I can tell when someone goes into the fridge for something.

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5

That’s exactly what mine turned out to be. The light in the fridge in the kitchen. LOL

6

So Sense detected 2 more devices this morning. Dryer and Heat 1. The odd thing though is that there’s no history at all for the Dryer in the past weeks at all, even though it most definitely was used yesterday. There’s absolutely 0 data that I can see at all, so I’m not even sure how Sense detected this as a device. I even downloaded the data for the entire month and it doesn’t download anything at all. So this one has me puzzled for sure.

Now Heat 1 is another interesting one. According to the data it has only been on on 3 different days since I have had my Sense, Fri Sep 7, Sat Sep 8 and Wednesday Sep 12. On Sep 12 it looks like it was in use all day from about 6 AM to 8 PM and using right around 0.7 KWh / hour. This basically is the same pattern for Fri/Sat Sep 7/8 when it was in use from somewhere after 6 PM on Friday Sep 7 until somewhere between 8 & 9 PM on Saturday Sep 8, again using about 0.7 KWh / hour.

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I have no clue what this device could be :slight_smile: It certainly isn’t the Dryer heating element which I initially expected when I got the notification. I can’t think of any other sources (blow dryers, hair straighteners, or even light bulbs, etc) that would match this pattern either. If anyone has any hints I’d be very interested.

Running total of device detection now looks as follows:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
  • AC - ± 96 hours
  • AC Fan - ± 96 hours
  • “Motor 2” - ± 96 hours (Still no clue what this is!?)
  • Appliance Light (Refrigerator) - ± 1 week
  • Dryer - ± 10 days
  • Heat 1 - ± 10 days
7

Do you have a dehumidifier in your basement or crawlspace? I have three (crawlspace, garage, shed) and they all consume 650-700W, and it’s not unusual for them to run continuously on very humid days and not at all on dry ones. Sense has accurately detected two of them, but the other one is on a very noisy circuit (lots of Homelink / Ethernet over Power traffic) and doesn’t ever show up. They got detected as Heat devices.

8

No, no dehumidifiers here. I’m in Idaho where the relative humidity is generally < 25%, especially in the summer, so not really a need for them :slight_smile: Still haven’t figured out what Motor 2 and/or Heat 1 is although Motor 2 apparently turned on again a bunch of times over the weekend. I’m thinking it’s probably one of my powertools that I was using in the garage building stuff.

9

Also looking at the API response I get back it looks like Sense is working on detecting 3 more devices:

“device_detection”: {
“in_progress”: [
{
“icon”: “microwave”,
“name”: “Possible Microwave”,
“progress”: 13
},
{
“icon”: “stove”,
“name”: “Possible Stove”,
“progress”: 3
},
{
“icon”: “stove”,
“name”: “Possible Stove”,
“progress”: 1
}
],

Will be interesting to see how long it’ll take it to actually detect them. Not sure what the “progress” number has to be for it to “be sure” that it is that device. I’ll keep querying this every day to see if the numbers change. So far in 3 days or so the progress number hasn’t changed.

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10

Ahhh how do you get that info? I’ve been asking for the ‘Currently Detecting’ feature back and this would at least let me know Sense is actually working on something for now.

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11

Yeah, that looks interesting.

12

From the API that the Web Site (https://home.sense.com) uses that I wrote a C# wrapper for:
Official API - #8 by frankwin.hooglander

If you scroll up a bit in that post it links to the Python one (GitHub - scottbonline/sense: Sense Energy Monitor API) and in there there’s a link to the PowerShell work done (beginnings of sense home energy monitor undocumented API dive · GitHub). Both of those were used in my work.

13

Got more things/progress with previous “in progress” detections

"device_detection": {
    "in_progress": [
        {
            "icon": "dishes",
            "name": "Possible Dishwasher",
            "progress": 6
        },
        {
            "icon": "washer",
            "name": "Possible Dryer",
            "progress": 18
        },
        {
            "icon": "microwave",
            "name": "Possible Microwave",
            "progress": 11
        },
        {
            "icon": "stove",
            "name": "Possible Stove",
            "progress": 7
        },
        {
            "icon": "stove",
            "name": "Possible Stove",
            "progress": 2
        },
        {
            "icon": "washer",
            "name": "Possible Dryer",
            "progress": 11
        }
    ],
    "found": [],
    "num_detected": 9
},

@RyanAtSense any insights on how to interpret the “progress” numbers? They seem to go up and down. Is a higher number “more” progress? or is getting closer to 0 an indicator that it has eliminated other possibilities?

14

Heat 2 and Heat 3 were detected late yesterday. No idea yet what they are but now at least up to 11 devices detected.

Running total:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
  • AC - ± 96 hours
  • AC Fan - ± 96 hours
  • Air Compressor (was Motor 2) - ± 96 hours
  • Appliance Light (Refrigerator) - ± 1 week
  • Dryer - ± 10 days
  • Heat 1 - ± 10 days
  • Heat 2 - ± 17 days
  • Heat 3 - ± 17 days

According to the API the following device detections are still in progress:
“in_progress”: [
{
“icon”: “dishes”,
“name”: “Possible Dishwasher”,
“progress”: 6
},
{
“icon”: “washer”,
“name”: “Possible Dryer”,
“progress”: 18
},
{
“icon”: “microwave”,
“name”: “Possible Microwave”,
“progress”: 11
},
{
“icon”: “stove”,
“name”: “Possible Stove”,
“progress”: 7
},
{
“icon”: “stove”,
“name”: “Possible Stove”,
“progress”: 2
},
{
“icon”: “washer”,
“name”: “Possible Dryer”,
“progress”: 11
}
],

15

WOW major detection day today. 6 new devices were detected today:

  • Motor 1 (still need to figure out what exactly)
  • Vacuum1 (I doubt this is correct but we’ll see as my vacuum is a robot vac that just charges on it’s dock instead of a traditional vacuum)
  • Ice Maker
  • Washer
  • Refrigerator light (Garage fridge)
  • Microwave

Either way, the running total now is:

  • Hue Lights - 24 hours, immediately after adding the Hue Hub
  • Fridge - ± 40 hours
  • AC - ± 96 hours
  • AC Fan - ± 96 hours
  • Air Compressor (was Motor 2) - ± 96 hours
  • Appliance Light (Refrigerator) - ± 1 week
  • Dryer - ± 10 days
  • Heat 1 - ± 10 days
  • Front Right burner on Stove - ± 17 days
  • Heat 3 - ± 17 days
  • Motor 1 - ± 18 days
  • Vacuum1 - ± 18 daysinstead of a traditional vacuum)
  • Ice Maker - ± 18 days
  • Washer - ± 18 days
  • Refrigerator Light (Garage fridge) - ± 18 days
  • Microwave - ± 18 days

Still working on these “in progress” detections:

"device_detection": {
    "in_progress": [
        {
            "icon": "dishes",
            "name": "Possible Dishwasher",
            "progress": 6
        },
        {
            "icon": "washer",
            "name": "Possible Dryer",
            "progress": 18
        },
        {
            "icon": "microwave",
            "name": "Possible Microwave",
            "progress": 15
        },
        {
            "icon": "stove",
            "name": "Possible Stove",
            "progress": 7
        },
        {
            "icon": "stove",
            "name": "Possible Stove",
            "progress": 2
        },
        {
            "icon": "washer",
            "name": "Possible Dryer",
            "progress": 11
        }
    ],
    "found": [],
    "num_detected": 17
},
16

Ok so “Light 1” ended up being the Refrigerator light for my fridge in the garage :slight_smile: So both refrigerator lights have now been detected. Not sure why it’s not detecting all my other lights though?!

Heat 2 ended up being one of the burners on my stove, none of the other burners, or my oven have been detected yet though.

17

Frankwin! Really sorry I missed this.

So, those numbers are an artifact from a deprecated feature (“Currently Learning” and “Up Next”). It was a great idea but turned out to be less so in practice, so it was pulled. You can read a bit more about the removal here: What’s New in v18

So, in short, those numbers won’t be very reliable.

18

Awesome. Thanks for the info. It would be great if Sense could bring that feature (or something similar) back as it would be interesting to see what Sense is currently “crunching on”. Of course I do agree that it should be a reliable feature, so pulling it until a better solution could be developed was probably good.

I kinda already figured those numbers were not very reliable as it’s been showing the same devices in there for awhile and “detected” none of the ones in the list, but did detect other devices in the meantime, so.

19

Oh yeah, it’d totally be a useful feature and definitely give some peace of mind. But false peace of mind is worse than no peace of mind. Hopefully we can get something similar out in the future.

20

Update: No new devices detected in the past 2 weeks :frowning: Boooooo