yea mine seems to have picked up BMW i3, Mitsubishi Outlander, chargers, but cant seem to find the BMW X5 charger, and it gets used the most… 
is what it is… I don’t rely on sense’s ability to identify devices any longer, was cool in the beginning… but not reliable. I pretty much use sense for its totals, consumed, generated etc… would be nice to have it reliably detect everything, but if they have not figured it out yet, its not a matter of “learning” and getting better over the years… If it cant figure things out in 4 years, its never going to keep up with the new stuff going in homes year after year, and getting replaced year after year. Until sense can ID a device in a week or less, or let us ID the device manually, it will never be 100% useful IMO.
I’ve been using Sense for seven months now with a Honda Clarity PHEV and a 240V 16A circuit with a Lectron EVSE cable. Sense has still not detected the car. Anything I can do? I’m about to switch to a 32A EVSE which I assume will reset the clock on Sense learning the car, but hopefully make it more likely to detect. I assume Sense doesn’t have a lot of 240V 16A patterns to review.
My EV detection took 8 months but Sense finally sees my Rivian R1T
EVSE is nothing more than a slightly more intelligent extension cord with a special plug.
120 or 240 Volt from the wall goes in and comes out at the special plug.
There is some extra information for the EV how much amps it is allowed to pull from the wall/plug.
That is it.
So sense does not detect the EVSE. EVSE is just a pass through of energy.
What sense is able to detect is the built in charger in the EV.
Each charger has a certain pattern how it starts and ramps up the energy till it has reached the amps the EVSE has told it to go to.
When my friend comes to visit me and charges his Ford Focus EV (has done that at least a 100 times in the last year) the sense is not able to detect the charger.
But my chevy bolt is no problem being recognized.
Long story short: switchting from 16A EVSE to 32A EVSE will not matter in detecting for sense.
I limited my max amps on my EVSE to about 80% of what my EV is capable (26 amps out of 32)
Depending on how much solar is available I change the current while charging during the day.
At night I still go with the 80% of max for longevity.
Sense would fairly quickly stop recognizing my EV when the amps would go below eg 23/24 amps.
But recently i was able to go down to 8 amps and still being recognized
As I posted here: Improved EV detection? - #2 by dannyterhaar
Interesting, thanks for the explanation!
my 500e charges on its LVL 1/2 charger but only level 1 because I’m using an outdoor 110V plug.
ramps up to a stable 1400W in about 5 seconds, with 3 intermediate intermediate power levels and maintains the same power until the car is full. I’m disapoointed that after more than 2 years my “other” is still over 40% and increasing…
sounds easy to recognize a lvl 1 charger
I don’t need sense to recognize the car or even the kind of device, just to detect an unknown device which I would be happy to name myself. I would even be happy if I could pinpoint 2-3 occurrences when I plugged it in or unplugged it if that could help
Three things,
- Welcome to the Community and thanks for your first post.
- Justin isn’t the Sense Community Manager - @JuliaAtSense is the newish manager.
- You are right, Sense might have been able to build a generic “slow ramp” detector for things like EVs, but there are a few reasons that that might not work.
- First off, realize that EVs and other “slow ramp” devices are currently spotted using Sense’s native detection which looks for short (1/2 second) on and off transitions. EV ramps tend to take seconds to minutes to reach full power.
- A generic slow-ramp detector works well if you have only one slow-ramp device in your house. But once you have two or more, you have to start dealing with discriminating between them on both the on and off sides. It’s no good to detect the generic ons/offs without being able to match them up, which means building a more sophisticated fingerprint or signature for each on and off. That eventually requires them to be able to tell the difference between ramps for a 4000W EV charge vs a ramps for 4000W heat pump.
- I’m guessing that Sense is revamping their framework so they can essentially use the same approach for slow-ramps as they do for the 1/2 second native detections, but I don’t know for sure.
Hey Justin - Just curious, does Sense have any update here? If sense has spent the last 3 years focusing on those 7 EV models, it would seem that things are a bit behind the ball. (I’m sure you’re aware of the explosion of different models available) The Bolt is the only non-Tesla in the top 10 for 2022 - it would be great to hear that there are efforts to actually capture charging curves for all EVs, given that this is a market that will continue to change quickly.
Edit: - I’ve been advised taht @JuliaAtSense is a better resource. Hi Julia!
12 months here charging my ID4 almost every night @ 9.6kW (initiated by my Grizzl-E smart at 9pm) - zero recognition. 
@vogelboy , you should probably address that question to @JuliaAtSense, the new Sense Community Manager.
Hey @vogelboy! First off, welcome to the Community!
As of now, there are no major updates I can give regarding EVs. We’re only working with Chevy Bolt/Volt, BMW i3, and Tesla S/X/3 EVs at this time.
Currently, Sense will not detect your ID4 but we are working on improving EV detection. If you wish to monitor your EV now, you can by using Dedicated Circuit Monitoring (DCM). This is best for larger devices that are less likely to show up or be quickly recognized by Sense.
If interested in DCM, you can learn more from our Help Center here. As well, if you wish to purchase additional current sensors you can here.
You can’t use DCM if we have solar correct? Doesn’t it use those sensors?
How about coming up with a 220v sensor, similar to the TP link’s we can add. Even one that requires an electrician to wire in would be fine, we’re sorely missing significant sources of power monitoring….like my swim pool…been more than a year and never found
You’re right - you can’t have both Sense Solar and DCM today.
I use a pricey version of a Sense 240V monitor today, a second Sense unit I bought from a user who didn’t want his anymore. Today, I monitor 2x240V devices (my Tesla Model 3 and a floor heater subpanel) using the DCM Sense. Right now the DCM Sense mains CTs are on my mains, but I may try to transfer them to my dryer, because one of the floor heaters gets conflated with my dryer. Because DCM Sense is used in a completely different use model, I’m only able to use a few measurements (the DCM devices, and possible Total Usage-dryer in the future), and the rest of dashboards are predictably garbage. But it doesn’t matter much since I route the measurements to Home Assistant.
I don’t think the current Sense measurement hardware is well-suited for a smart plug application. It’s built for very rapid sampling and updates vs typical smartplugs. The hardware do that makes it much more expensive to build than a Kasa KP115, or the like. Sense might do better with EVs by offering a charger-side integration since many of those are connected today, be the connection and monitoring in the car (Tesla) or in the Charger (ChargePoint)
So, I guess this means my Audi Q4 which is built on the same VW platform as the ID.4 is never going to be discovered either, Since I already have extra sensors in place for the Air Handler on my A/C which was never discovered (after 2+ years) I don’t have that option.
I wouldn’t say “never” - My take from my user experience is that Sense went quietly back to the drawing board several times with their Model S and Model Y detection before they got it to the reasonable state it is in today. I would guess that every time they do that for another make/model, they learn how to build a more generalizable framework for EVs. But I wouldn’t say never.
Two other thoughts to perhaps help in the meantime.
- Do you need both your Flex Sensor CTs for your AC air handler ? A single one can be used on 240V balanced (or even nearly balanced loads). There are also ways to run both black and red circuit wires on a 240V circuit through a single CT to have them add up. So you might have a CT available.
- I don’t know about whether there is an integration for Audi charging for Home Assistant, but for a while, I was using the Tesla Integration to roll up power data from Sense and the chargers inside my Teslas. If I was intrepid, I could have also sent the Tesla charger power usage data off to the Sense monitor via SenseLink.
Unfortunately, I’ve got enough history with them that I’m going to stick with ‘never’, The fact that their response about EV charging is more than 3 years old and they do not appear interested in evolving that, tells me everything I need to know.
I’ll just have to ignore that spike in load and use the monitoring capability that came with the ChargePoint I bought to measure the usage of the car.
Each time I step on another variant of poor discovery I pull back further and further on my reliance on this platform as an actually useful tool. The only thing that records reliably in my home is stuff plugged into smart outlets, I’ve stopped counting on most everything else over time as most things were never discovered and recently I’m seeing more and more ‘rogue’ reports of devices operating that I know are not since I’m standing right in front of them.
If the platform is evolving, it’s not in a way that supports the original targeted customer base.
Nice summary! Totally agree
I just got an Ioniq 5 and I’ve accepted that it will be a while, if ever, before it’s detected. I’ll probably use the DCM option, but it’s on a subpanel. I doubt that I’ll be able to fish it through the conduit, and there’s already some detected devices on that panel as well as a Kasa. Can I assume that it would confuse those devices and double the detected draw?
Related for my situation, is there ever going to be a separate secondary device that can just be add-on flex clamps?
Two quick answers:
- Just like smartplug “devices”, you can tell Sense which native detections are part of circuit instrumented for Direct Circuit Monitoring, to avoid double counting.
- Sense hasn’t offered any roadmap for additional monitoring. But it is possible to use a second Sense monitor for additional circuit channels, though you need something like Home Assistant watching over both monitors to combine the data. Here’s what that looks like.