Hi @ATechGuy. Appreciate you putting your thoughts together. A few things I’d like to mention.
While @kevin1 isn’t technically a Sense employee, he is very aware of the underlying methodology Sense uses for detection and has engaged with similar threads during his 4 years as a Sense user. He’s also a Beta tester for Sense, so he’s aware of some things coming down the pipeline that may address some of your feedback.
As @kevin1 mentioned, Always On isn’t guaranteed to change by turning a breaker on and off (learn more about Always On here).
That being said, we recognized there was more we could do to enable users to find their Always On devices and are releasing something soon (within the next week) that allows users to enter in estimates for Always On devices. You’ll see more about this in the upcoming release notes, and we hope that this release empowers users to learn more about some of their “unknown” Always On devices that account for a significant percentage of their bill.
I can definitely understand the logic here, and brought this up as a question when I first started with Sense. There are quite a few reasons this isn’t a great solution, one of which being a lot of devices don’t cycle on when you flip the breaker. If you were to turn each breaker on and off one by one, you’ve created an unrealistic view of what your home looks like - you’re never going to have just “one” device running. Since Sense is measuring at the mains, it needs to be able to see that device with all the normal day-to-day noise that your home generates with multiple devices on. A better analogy might be the “loud, crowded room” - Sense is essentially in a “loud, crowded room” of devices “talking”. If you turn off all the devices except for one, then yes, we can “hear” it better, but that doesn’t make it easier for us to “hear” when all the normal devices in your home are on. It just allowed us to “hear it” in one specific instance.
Since talking to more folks here that have decades of experience in the machine learning and AI fields, I’ve gained a lot of respect for the massive issue they’re trying to solve. It’s not an easy question, and our team has spent years looking at ways to approach this problem.
I’d be curious as to what goals you’re referencing.
In @kevin1 original reply, he shared this video interview with our Data Science team about what was coming in 2021, specifically mentioning Progressive Device Detection. While this doesn’t mimic your suggested approach of turning breakers on and off, it does address a lot of feedback regarding providing more clarity into what’s using energy and will significantly impact the type of data users are able to see early on. On top of that, we’re going to continue with additional integrations and continue developing features like Dedicated Circuit Monitoring and Smart plugs to expand the types of devices Sense can connect to.
We’re going to continue to add to Sense, and I’d like to believe that a lot of users that might have criticisms about Sense today also agree that we’re constantly adding to Sense to make it better for everyone. While I see the next few years as pivotal for Sense, I’m unsure of what goals outside of “making it better for everyone” are more pressing.