Devices never discovered after almost 3 years

I’m curious what other long-time users have experienced on some specific classes of devices and discovery. I’m coming up on 3 years since installation and there are a few devices in the house that have never been ‘discovered’. Examples include:

Chamberlain Garage Door Opener- No part of this has ever been discovered by Sense.
Samsung Refrigerator (2015 model)- No part of this has ever been discovered by Sense. I have a much older 2003 model fridge in the garage that was discovered (including the lights inside) just a few days after Sense installation
Kenmore washer (2015 model)- No part of this has ever been discovered by Sense. After a recent renovation of the laundry room I moved one of my HS110 over to that outlet to get a baseline of what it looks like but I want to pull that off since discovery will never happen with it on that outlet.
Samsung Dishwasher (2015 model)- No part of this either pump or heating element has ever been discovered.
Insinkerator Garbage Disposal- Never discovered.

Are these all classes of devices that are simply never going to be discovered and I just need to roll with it. I raised this issue with support about 18 months ago but they just dropped it as low priority. I’m curious if any others are having other, or better experiences with similar equipment in their home. I’m not interested in investing any more money in HS110’s so I move one around occasionally but that will never actually ‘fix’ the discovery gap issue.

Hmmm, we have lots of overlap, only your Insinkerator is different.

Of my 167 “devices” and last inventory (probably more than that now, because we keep adding different devices to the house, recently Alexis, which isn’t detectable either), Sense has only detected 13 and some of those not terribly reliably after two years. Lots of “phantom” detections, which happen for a bit then never show up again. Based on what I’ve heard from support, engineering (two calls, one with Sense CEO involved). And these forums, I do not expect any of this list to ever get discovered.

@don1,
I have had a somewhat different experience, but I have different appliances…

  • 3 Liftmaster (Chamberlain) Garage Door Openers (AC Motors) - All detected most of the time (misses some) but the via only one detection, though the LED bulb is not). If you have battery back up (DC motor), detection is far less likely.
  • 3 SubZero refrigerator units (2015 model) - At least 2 have been detected by Sense
  • LG Washer (2019 model) - no detection by Sense - have on an HS110
  • Bosch Dishwasher (2015 model) - Sense only detects dry cycle heating element.

Thanks,

I hadn’t even thought about the garage door opener motor being DC due to the battery backup;, so I guess that will never be discovered without something like an HS110.

It seems I’ve got a bunch of things against me:

  • I live in Florida so we get epic lightning and therefore most home electronics need to be on UPS. Unless I use TPLink power strips, none of that will ever be discretely seen.
  • Nearly every light in my house (except one hideous bathroom fixture) has been converted to LED, specifically for energy savings so none of that is ever going to be discovered and therefore not discretely measured.
  • The structure of the electrical system in my house with split panels prevents me from ever seeing the load for the pool pump and Heat Pump compressor. I’d need two Sense to do it but without easy merging of data I’ve not bothered with that investment. With the secondary clamps I can at least see the inside condenser/air handler now.
  • It seems any ‘newer’ more energy efficient appliances like the kitchen refrigerator that no longer have hard off and on cycles will never be discovered and require supplemental equipment like HS110 to be seen. Unfortunately that’s not an option on hard-wired devices like the dishwasher.

It seems that this is about all I’m ever going to get. It’s certainly gotten better over the last 3 years but some key power hungry devices have never been discovered and it looks like they never will be. I’ll just have to decide how important the discrete measurement is for me to decide if I want to invest in lots of equipment like HS110’s for those devices.

My garbage disposal took nearly 2 years to be detected, but it finally did show up.

@don1 Was holding off on responding here because I’ve been working on this for the last 24 hours, and it seems relevant :slight_smile:

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Frustrating, isn’t it? Re your dishwasher, those run on 110v so you could actually convert to it being plugged in thru the current KP115 (the HS110 replacement). It would take a bit of wiring, to unwire the DW from the wall box and install an outlet, then a plug on the DW. Depends whether it’s worth the effort.

Many modern garage door openers actually have DC motors to facilitate battery backup. Those also ramp up and down, not the sharp transition that Sense depends on. If you really want to monitor them, KP115’s work fine.

Interesting segment, many thanks for sharing it with us. Sense engineering has a tough job for sure, and some of the challenges are clearly being addressed and some ( for example, constant on devices) of them never can be without additional circuit/device specific sensors…like the TPLink devices.

I sure wish Sense would focus a bit on the LARGE 240v loads that they can’t address without external help and work with someone like Kasa to provide a “wired in” 240v device that would work with Sense like the KP115 does. That would be worth the investment for those situations like my 240v constant pressure deep well pump and all I’d have to do is insert it in the 240v line between the breaker and the pump controller.

For Sense data engineering that should be ZERO effort, because you already have the communication, protocol, and management components in place. For the KASA folks all the hard bits are also already done, all that’s needed is a bit of repackaging to put the smarts in a module with in and out leads instead of plug and socket.

Unfortunately, making the change on the Dishwasher would require pulling the dishwasher out from under the cabinets which I’m not terribly interested in doing so I guess I’ll have to give up on that one.

Thanks but without intending to sound too harsh, that’s yet another round of ‘give it more time’ which is what I’ve been hearing for nearly 3 years.

It seems like a lot of energy has been focused on EV’s while common, modern household appliances like washers, dishwashers, garbage disposals and refrigerators still don’t work and it seems we should not expect that they will unless we’re prepared to spend more money on 3rd party accessories for some of them and never see others.

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That wasn’t at all the impression I had after hearing from Ghinwa and George. A significant portion of the video was dedicated to how we’re improving detection for large resistive heating elements, which apply to several of the large appliances you’re mentioning. Ghinwa’s example debuting the release of the Device Manager project (which is currently in Beta) is focused on maintaining the integrity of devices as we detect them and we’ve seen some very positive results from testing, including increased coverage (the % of a user’s overall wattage that we issue detections for).

I understand that your experience might have fallen short of expectations, but we’ve been hearing your feedback and we’re dedicating a lot of our limited resources here to several extremely ambitious projects to help the Sense user experience, especially as it pertains to device detection. Ghinwa mentioned Device Manager, which will release to all users this year.

We’re going to be doing a similarly styled Product team update in the coming weeks and the goal here is to let Sense users know what’s coming up in the near future. Until then, please reach out to me via private message. I would be more than happy to send you a pair of flex sensors (unless you currently have solar) so you can utilize Dedicated Circuit Monitoring to identify your Dishwasher and Washing Machine instantly @don1

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While I do not dispute that teams may be continuing to work on things, I guess I have to selfishly acknowledge that those activities are having little or no visible impact on my experience with Sense. The appliances I referenced above have been in my home since before Sense was installed but they’ve never been discovered. When support looked at it 18 months or so ago they acknowledged they could see them but resolving discovery with those appliances was not a priority and they closed the ticket. It doesn’t seem anything has changed with that. As I noted above, Im not talking about exotic edge cases but common household appliances that are in virtually every home.

A great deal of emphasis in that video was placed on EV’s which it’s been made very, very clear is a priority. Since I don’t have an EV that effort adds no value to my experience with the product. And as for Device Manager- if Sense doesn’t discover the components, an ability to integrate them as one device isn’t valuable.

And thanks for the reference on dedicated circuit monitoring but I already have that port in use since Sense never discovered the Air Handler for my Heat Pump system and that is installed for that. I can’t see the outside compressor for that heat pump but at least I can see the air handler side now.

I guess my frustration is the general overall response is the same ‘we’re working hard’ or ‘give it more time’ I’ve gotten for nearly 3 years now and these common household appliances are still not discovered.

Interesting. My Chamberlain Garage Door Opener was one of the first devices discovered. It is used a minimum of twice daily. Also, my Samsung Refrigerator (2017 model) was an early discovery. Samsung washer and dishwasher still waiting to join my list. Samsung dryer was early on the list. I though both would be discovered quickly since both have WiFi.

Yeah, the original garage door opener (nor it’s Flourcescant bulbs) was ever discovered. I had to replace the opener 2 weeks ago after a nasty power surge hit the house frazzling the electronics resulting in random/spurious opening all hours of the day. The new one (like the old one) is WiFi connected but since it has battery backup, it’s a DC motor and based on experience I’ve had and others have described I’m no longer expecting it to be discovered except with the addition of supplemental hardware (HS110, or similar)

I have a second 2003 Whirlpool refrigerator in the garage that was detected within a few days of Sense installation but the 2015 Samsung in the kitchen has never been discovered. The old Whirlpool one even maintained visibility when it was moved to a new circuit in the panel.

From what I can tell on the dryer (Kenmore), it’s just the heating element that’s been discovered, I can’t find any indications the motor has ever been discovered and the washer (Kenmore) and dishwasher (Samsung) are complete ghosts.

I’m sorry that you were left with a different impression that I and some others did from this, which was “We hear your issues, we’re working on them, and this is how”. It sounds like you’re looking for an instantaneous solution to a large issue that will (and has been) incrementally improved over time.

Unfortunately, a lot of those “improvements” are not necessarily “easily visible” immediately by users in the front-end, but deliver significant quality improvements over time. George mentioned reducing errors for resistive heating elements by a factor of 3. That’s a significant improvement. The purpose of these videos is to shed some light on that and give you a view into the scale of the problem we’re actively attempting to solve and improve.

My original offer to send over a couple KP-115 smart plugs (since you’re already utilizing Flex Sensors) still stands, and looks like it would take care of several of the devices that you haven’t had detected so far. You’re welcome to reach out.

I’m not looking for an instantaneous solution at all since most of the issues I’ve raised are ones that I’ve been raising since my installation of Sense nearly 3 years ago. There the same issues I’ve raised up every 6-9 months or so since then and been told (by Sense support) that resolution was not a priority. I brought them up again here after a gap to see if anything from an end user experience has changed and it seems it has not which is why these devices are still not discovered and therefore not discretely measurable.

I guess the important point here is the response is a little too inwardly facing on all the hard work that’s going on, but if the end user (after nearly 3 years for me) is not able to see and measure actual benefit, does that really matter?

The bottom line seems to be that not much has changed as it relates to the devices in my home that Sense still can not or will not discover after nearly 3 years and I can go away with that knowledge and check back in another 6 months to see if anything has improved.

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