Sense has been installed for more than a year and overall, I’m pleased with the product and what it has helped me do to gain efficiency. We are, however, now in a rut - I have nearly forty devices detected, but 7-10 are still unidentified. Additionally, some devices have “died” as their power signatures have changed and degraded with time. Finally, my Always On/Other remain persistently high. I’ve done the deep dive (to the best of my ability) and haven’t managed to budge ‘Always On’ below 800w.
Is it time to Etch-a-Sketch the whole thing and start over? Purging the data map and rebuilding would give me an updated set of points, but I would face the long and uncertain “identification” journey again.
Has anyone seen an improvement in identification and or detection after hard resetting the Sense?
I have done two hard reset events with my Sense over the past 3 years. My thoughts:
I get back to approximately the same place each time, though the detections came faster after the 1st and 2nd restart events.
A hard reset will not help with conflations. Conflations are just a fact of life as Sense works to improve models - I still often see one step backward to eventually move two steps forward.
The biggest pain with a hard reset is that it throws away all the specific device info you might have laboriously entered - model #'s, real names of devices. I recommend that you do an export of data so you’ll at least have a copy of all this information. I’m guessing that a hard reset will also kill off your home inventory. That can’t be saved via export.
The other big pain will be the sleuthing - devices might come back with different detection names than the last time.
My 2c - before you do the hard reset, considering run investing in a few Kasa smart plugs (if you haven’t already done so) to poke around with your possible Always Ons and Other contributors.
Having recently done a reset I can confirm that “Device Inventory” is deleted, although the “Home Details” are not.
I agree on the recommendation for Kasa plugs. You can also schedule stuff to turn off at night which will eliminate their contribution to “Always On” but may not make a huge difference on your bill.
I appreciate the insight and the detailed responses. Mine is a HomeKit home, so I’ll have to go Wemo over Kasa. But yes, I continue sleuthing the Always On with the hope of one day cutting it by 50-60%.
I think the Wemo plugs default to “off” on power failure as opposed to “last state” like the Kasa plugs. Just something to be aware of in case you plug something like a fridge or water heater into it.
I’ve reset also and my results were very similar to what was detected the first time around. I did ha e my garage doors detected after the reset but lost half of my largest load (15KW heat strips).