Getting Serious about Always On

[kevin1]

@qrnef, one thought - get one more HS110. Use it as your exploration “power probe”. I found a couple of surprise Always On users with that technique. Very helpful in assessing Always Ons plus finding additional smart plug candidates.

• Garage door receivers - my older ones had an Always On of 12W per opener (3). My new ones are only 8W - still significant.

• Furnaces - have an electrical control board that is Always On and power the thermostats. 6W per furnace for 2 furnaces.

• Also discovered my Sonos AMP:Connected have a good sized standby, maybe 8W. Nowhere near the 1/2 W of some other AV devices. I turn them off from the smart plug except when in use.

Some of my experiments with smart plugs and devices with Always On components here:

Some Data Science of “On", “Off” and “Idle”

Numerous visitors to this forum question “why it is so hard for Sense to see" an on or off pattern for a device in the Power Meter that is clearly visible to them. Or why does Sense have trouble figuring out when a smartplug device is in and “Off” state, vs. an “Idle” state vs. an “On/Active”. The gist of issue is that detecting patterns in the midst of noise and other patterns is a hard problem and the human brain and vision system are a very sophisticated piece of biologic hardware built for…