I’ve been get tons of these lately. I’ll have an alert created to let me know if a device has been on for a certain amount of time. Take my water heater, if it’s been on for more than 20 minutes, then I get an alert.
So I get these alerts for the water heater and other devices with similar alerts set and they are wrong. They have not been on for the specified time.
Anyone experiencing this?
I’ve contacted support and was given the answer that it’s working properly. How is is that?
Here is my water heater alert screenshot and one for the power meter taken right after the alert popped up.
Notice how the water heater wasn’t even on at the time of the alert.
1 Like
Not sure, could be user error?
Sure, maybe.
Please explain. I’m not able to see where I have caused this but am fully open to that possibility.
Under the Water Heater device management do you have “Show on Timeline” ON?
If so, you can compare the timeline (in Now) with the alerts and narrow down whether you’re experiencing a bug.
I do have it set that way. But you can only see the tags on the now timeline when the Sense app is open. I can clearly see the 4500 watts from the water heater on timeline and power meters.
It’s definitely a bug
Actually, looking more closely at your Water Heater-only waveform (i.e. the Sense-native detected waveform) I’m interested in the detailed variation vs. mine.
That could be something to do with the reason the triggering is bugged.
For comparison look at my overall Power Meter vs the detected breakout – which is very smooth (as I would expect) compared to yours.
Why would this happen at this time? The waveform for this looks like it always has.
What I think is happening is Sense is confusing other heating elements. I can see the wife was doing laundry and dishwasher at that time and while that was going on, Sense thought the stovetop and oven were cycling. With the heating elements cycling, I wonder if they overlap each other in a way that it throws Sense off.
Here is a shot of the device waveform from when it was first detected. This is the first waveform in its history back in January.
That’s what I’m getting at.
Perhaps because my water heater was detected the way it is and shows a smoother (plateaued) waveform after the initial “ON” cue, the “OFF” cue is clearer = 4kW power drop. Meanwhile your electrical environment (or perhaps the water tank itself) is “noisier”. Any of those variations could be a false trigger.
Meanwhile though there is of course the mismatch in the timeline vs the alert (right?) … so it seems like the bug is there, not with the detection.
I’m hoping the waveform for the water heater is correct and it’s only running for that few minutes that it shows.
Either way, there is definitely something wrong.
Sense shows the water heater running about 5 minutes but sends an alert for over 20 minutes. They can’t both be correct.
This would make the stats for the device absolutely worthless. This is also happening with the fridge defrost.
I don’t understand how support could say there isn’t a problem. Either the alert is wrong or the power meter for the device is wrong.
Can you post the overall Power Meter for the same period as the first image with just the water heater.
There was a lot going on at that time with the dishwasher and dryer running. But I think you’ll be able to see there was not an added 4500 watts for the alerted 20 minutes
Sorry both of those water tank detailed waveforms are not on the overall timeframe you just posted. Can you repost either one in the same timeframe. It’s not going to solve the problem, which I think is a bug, but I am interested in the mismatch here.
Overall from 1:15 - 2:00 would be ideal.
Here is from 1:15 to 2:00. I added a shot so you could clearly see that although it appears it could have been on, the total usage was 3800 watts during that time. Well below the 4500 for the heater and anything else on at the time.
This is what I get on a scaled-for-time & wattage overlay … sorry it’s pretty crude due to the low resolution input. Looks like Sense is correctly detecting the ON but failing to detect the OFF cycle due to continued higher power use at that point. That still doesn’t explain the notification mismatch though. It seems the Device waveform is displaying one ON-OFF cycle detection and meanwhile the notification is based on a different detection cycle where Sense is still registering the device as ON.
1 Like
So are you thinking that although the On was recognized, the off wasn’t? But, there was enough noise or usage from similar devices at the same time, possibly causing Sense to be confused and the alerts were triggered as a time out of sorts?
I guess I’m asking a question and explaining what I think is happening.