How Long Does Detection Take and What Should I Expect?

Technical Questions
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I’ve had my Sense active for over a month now. It accurately and instantly detects and displays the dynamics of my home. I have 4 sensors… one on each A/C compressor breaker, and one on each main 120V feeds into my split panel. But it hasn’t detected a single load/device yet. Does it really take a few months to even detect the easy profiles, like my refrigerators cycling on/off?

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@dave11 ,
Whether Sense “sees”, “learns” and consistently “detects” the on/off transitions of your devices depends on a number of factors, though mainly:

  • The type of device - Sense generally sees the on/offs of a traditional refrigerator, but will have difficulty with “inverter models” which don’t have clear on / off transitions. Sense will typically see simple AC units but has more difficulty with ones with variable speeds, again, because the on/offs aren’t as clear.
  • The amount of on/off “noise” in your house - Sense will be challenged to find devices that get lost in the noise. You can generally see how much noise there is in your house by looking at the Power Meter. More on noise here:
    Is your home (electrically) noisy? - Sense Blog
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I don’t know if this is noisy. My split 120V feeds are clean. But of course, the dynamics of on/off devices and the variable air handler and variable compressor causes the overall energy demand to vary. However, both of the A/C compressors are on separate Sensor dedicated sensors, so that should help. Also, my Phillips Hue devices are shown due to connecting to that controller. But Sense itself hasn’t detected anything in over a month. I’ll keep waiting. Nothing I can do to “train” the Sense brain I guess. Here is a pic of my devices and meter…

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@dave11, so it sounds and looks like you have both the compressor and air handler on separate DCM (Dedicated Circuit Monitoring) CTs, and I can see the Hues. The interesting thing for me is that you have a fair number of transitions in your Power Meter view (on phone app), but very few of the transitions are tagged with on/off power changes. that tends to indicate that many of the on/off transition ramps are longer than what Sense is tuned to “see” as a transition of interest. If transitions are too slow (more than a second or so) Sense can pass over them. My Power Meter shows and much greater density of transitions with tags, especially for the bigger transitions.

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5

Ok this was funny… after a month of nothing… in the last 30 mins I got two alerts that Sense detected my microwave and a fridge. Maybe Sense sensed my impatience. LOL. Now that is knows what my microwave pattern looks like, it actually profiles the usage of that device retroactively to the install date. NICE.

I couldn’t include an image in my post, I guess because I’m new here?

Thanks for your help!

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Yup, once Sense "learns "and “detects” a new device it typically backfills detections by at least a month. No backfill for Hue integration or Kasa smart plug “detections” because those are really measurements.

You should be able to include images, now. I bumped up your “Trust Level” :wink: