I have gaps between 5-20 minutes on a daily basis, regardless of whether I have realtime monitoring open. I also have ruled out my network as the cause. Open ticket with support going on week 4. Really hoping if it’s a hardware issue that sense will somehow make it right.
I have peaks and valleys but they are constant with our usage. Look at the bright side, maybe you’re not being charged for electricity during those gaps!!! Seriously sounds like a signal issue with your unit.
I too have blasted the Sense monitor with pings and have seen the same thing although not as bad as yours.
A lot of latency all the time and random packet loss, no app or power meter issues though.
I submitted a ticket with support. They responded that it appeared to them that the gaps aligned with firmware updates and reboots of my Sense. Not sure I buy that explanation.
I also reported an issue with one of my HS110 switches reporting wattage even though it’s off. They indicated it’s a known issue and could take time to resolve. Problem is my usage data is wrong when this happens. Other get credited to the off switch.
That would sure be a lot of firmware updates and reboots on a daily basis! Not sure I buy that explanation either.
to all that have questioned these updates, I’ve asked questions of support and I have an understanding about these…
there are at least 2 types of updates our Sense Monitors receive… the main update is of course, its firmware (OS) and we see that version clearly on the Sense Monitor info page… but there is a second update that happens in the background that we are not aware of…
(this is not a direct quote from support, simply my understanding explained so more people understand what I now know)… as the Sense Monitor scans your home’s internal grid, its looking for device signatures… once it IDs a potential signature/device, it looks into the general device database that sense has from our combined homes… each of our monitors don’t have all the known devices in it… so as it queries the general database @ sense, it downloads signatures from that common database to our Sense Monitors… some of those device signatures/updates require a reboot… if you are early on in the detection phase, your monitor may be downloading more often… as you get devices detected in your home, these downloads get less and less, eventually happening about once a week… but during early detection, they can happen multiple times in a single day, from my understanding…
now, this all makes sense based on the structure of data they (sense company) chose to follow… it makes perfect sense that the individual sense monitors wouldn’t have the entire database pre-installed… that would use up unnecessary memory and possibly slow down unit response if the unit had the entire database to scan through each time it thinks it has a new signature… it explains some (maybe all) of the gaps we’re seeing…
now, a method to combat this “gap” in time, is also addressed in their structure… there is a backfill of data that happens… a cache where your data is stored during a potential gap, then filled in later when its convenient… from talking to support, they have confirmed that my data on their side has been filled in… but I still see gaps in my timeline… so there might be a problem with cache in my apps… for example, my browsers & mobile apps all have some sort of my data downloaded from Sense data storage… if nothing tells my apps to refresh that data, there is nothing more to go get… so I’m going to play with this further, by clearing cache and then going back to my gaps and see if they’ve been filled in as support says they are… my first thought is yes, it will be filled as they say, but my local cache may still show the gaps if not refreshed…
so to me, this all makes sense… the Sense Monitor is like other internet appliances… its not self contained… it relies on databases stored off site to make it smarter…
I hope this explanation helps others… enjoy…
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Good explanation… The thing I’m seeing today vs. historically is that:
- Sense is taking longer to bring up realtime displays (bubbles and power meter), than in the past. It used to happen within a second or so… Now it can take 10 or more seconds for the display to come up. Maybe it’s taking longer because of a growing user base, but it may also reflect a new data transmission strategy.
- When realtime data does come up in the Power Meter, there is often a gap between new incoming data, and historic data. It’s as if the new data is being relayed straight from the Sense monitor, while the history data comes from the Sense mothership, but some of the most recent data hasn’t reach the mothership for replay yet. Often it will backfill at some point in time while I’m watching, but sometimes not. That gap might be data that resides in the monitor and hasn’t been uploaded or processed by the mothership yet.
- Sometimes when I bring up the realtime display, most noticeably with the Power Meter, the data for the gap prior just before I invoked realtime metering, goes missing, without backfill, in the historical record. Seems like the Sense monitor doesn’t have a chance to upload.
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thanks @kevin1
2 particular times on Monday I had gaps… support has identified these two instances as a backfill event and the gaps had already backfilled in their view… looking in my history through the web app and android app, those gaps still appear to me… and even after clearing browser cache, & even resetting the android app (clearing all app storage & re-login), the gaps are still there… but support sees complete data for those times… so I’m continuing to work things out with support on that part…
so, since I would suspect I’m not the only one in the world having this issue, somewhere there is a difference in the way that sense sees my data, and in the way I can see my data… as explained, the data is there… just a cache or other issue in the background that eludes us…
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My only contribution at the moment is a general ask that anyone posting that hasn’t written in to support yet to do so. I have a literal rack of monitors and I can’t reproduce the issue with any of their accounts no matter what I do.
Not to say it doesn’t happen just that, well, it’s not something that completely broke somewhere for everyone that caused it. The best way for us to figure it out is to look into the cases where it happens and the only way we can do that is when people actually write in and tell us.
I know some of the names here, so, thank you to you guys, although I’m sorry for the issue that you’ve seen.
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Yes. I also have this issue on an iPhone. It seems to happen around the REAL-TIME function.
I will open a ticket for this next time it happens.
This picture is just the last 24 hours, but the spots where Sense seems to get zero data is getting worse for me, and probably makes the overall usage/cost calculation almost useless. Is anyone else experiencing these types of missing periods of data?
And to clarify…my internet connection was up and working the entire time. The sense is close to a WIFI spot. I don’t think it has anything to do with an internet connection.
Several users (including myself) have seen dropouts when we open the power meter and leave it open for a while. Do you fit in this category by chance? I have even seen drop outs when running a heavy network stream - impacting internal wifi perhaps.
The power meter had not been open the whole day when I sat down and did that screen shot. So it’s not that. And I don’t think I had anything significant streaming or using lots of bandwidth. And or me…it’s not just the power meter. My timeline has missing gaps of activity all the time also. It’s making the product quite useless for me.
If you can access your router via web interface and located attached WiFi devices, see if you can identify your Sense unit MAC address to see what signal strength it sees for your Sense unit. I had significantly poor strength on mine ( it was within 20 feet of the WiFi antenna) and ended up having to put an extender on the inside wall of the house opposite my electric panel to get reliable connection. I have heavy block wall. Might be worth investigating dB level at router. I would also suggest opening a ticket with support.
The two thing that could be affecting it is your router is too close.
or
your keep alive time is set too long.
They are both longshots but others have stated problems with the
distance being too close.
The other is your router basically saying “hey, I’m still here” but is
used for idle time. This is a real longshot because Sense is sending things all the
time that should keep it alive.
When was the last time you rebooted your modem and router?
When I experienced a similar issue in the past it ended up being resolved by rebooting both. I suspected that because my router or modem had been online for so long without a reboot that it’s buffers started to get overrun/corrupted/laggy - we have a very bandwidth intensive household so it’s not uncommon for us to pass hundreds of gigs a day / multiple terrabytes a month through our networking hardware.
I figured that it was causing undue lag or packet loss or something that was effecting Sense somehow.
When I rebooted all my networking hardware including both the modem and router, the problem cleared.
It may also be worth flipping the breaker feeding your Sense itself and rebooting it as well at the same time.
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Yes, I have seen similar, especially since about Dec. 20th. Have filed a ticket with Sense and they are working on this issue. Wouldn’t hurt to file one as well. In one casual comment, one of the support people said that our real data is there, but “somehow didn’t make it all into the history timeline”.
My investigations here. I actually wrote an R program to count visible dropouts per hour.
