Different Pattern after Power Outage

Technical Questions
1

I’ve only had my sense device for a couple weeks now, so I’m still watching new devices trickle in here and there and its been very exciting when I get the notifications. Very happy with the product so far, great job sense team!

Anyway, I had an interesting experience after a power outage yesterday and I wanted to see if anyone has any input or seen anything similar before. Since I installed the unit, I’ve had these 200-250w spikes every ~60 seconds, consistently, every day. I did some investigating around the house and I could pin down what the device was. Seemed like maybe a UPS charger or something, but I ruled those out. This WAS an ongoing investigation until yesterday when my power went out. Someone took out a pole with their car a few thousand feet up the road. When power was restored this mysterious 200w ‘signal’ - as I’m now calling it - was gone. I’ve checked everywhere in my house to see if I could find something that didn’t turn back on, but everything seems to be functioning normally.

Does it make sense (heh) that some line hardware was causing this and during the repair it was replaced? Do external load patterns typically make it past the meter? Otherwise does anyone have any insight as to what was maybe causing this signal and was maybe reset due to the outage?

Here’s a snippet of before and after the initial outage (power went down for ~10 min, then came back (possibly a reroute?), then 30 min later went back down I’m assuming while they were replacing the pole). Below that is a lower res view before and then after the outage.

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Easy to see the repetitious spikes before but not after.

Another question for the Devs is, do you think the lack of this signal will make it easier for the unit to map devices? (i want to say yes?)

Thanks for anyone’s input :slight_smile:

2

Another theory - the power outage stopped by the operation of some device in your household, and it never started up again after the power came back on. I have a couple of electronic devices that run continuously but have to be switched back on manually after a power outage.

As for whether those transitions being gone will aid detection - it would have been useful to see if Sense was tagging those continuous on/offs in the iOS or Android app power meter - you would see power numbers associated with every transition. That might give you a clue whether those transition were “stepping on” other transitions from other devices.

3

I did think the same thing, but I haven’t found anything that’s off or not functioning.

I did see them getting tagged in the app. So that means it could have been overshadowing other transisions?

4

I agree with @kevin1 hunch above.

From a non-Data Science personnel POV, anything that’s done to reduce that background “noise” that impacts Sense detection in very “noisy” homes should make it that much easier for Sense to detect recognizable device models.

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5

BTW - your spiky device looks a lot like an electric blanket. I don’t have any in my house, but others have posted.

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