I have two tp link smart plug. On the home.sense.com with web browser they show up under “Now” with a bubble. They DO NOT show up on the “Devices” list. My cell phone app DO NOT show them on the “Now” or “Devices”. They used to work fine, then one day just stopped showing on the cell phone. They show up just fine on the Kasa app. I have completely removed the app from my cell phone, reinstalled, turned off Network listening and back on with no changes… kind of lost what to try now.
That’s very strange. Both the web app and the phone app really just reflects what the Sense cloud API is telling them. If you haven’t tried already, you might want to try logging out of the app and logging back in.
Yeah I’ve logged out, uninstalled app, no change.
On the cell phone app, on the Now page, under “today” where it lists the most recent change, will show “Fridge turned on” “Fridge turned off” but never see it in devices or the now bubbles.
Right now, the cell phone app shows only an “Always On” bubble at 388 watts.
The web version shows
Always On 174 watts,
Network Rack 124 Watts, —on a smart plug
Kitchen Fridge 98 Watts. --on a smart plug (inverter compressor)
Those add up close to the same, some of these bounce around of course.
The only CLUE I have, is this started when I changed network router for the house. I went from an older Netgear to a newer Netgear router. When I setup the new router, I used the same SSID, Password, everything. Everything in the house worked seamlessly with a reboot. I think it was at that moment the plugs disappeared from the sense phone app, even though the Kasa app never had a problem finding them. This has been ongoing for about 6 months now, have had power outages lasting days since, and has not resolved its self.
Are your IP addresses for the Kasa plugs - dynamic or fixed addresses? Try setting all the Kasa plugs to a fixed, reserved or static IP address. Doing that solved my issues.
I will try that…thanks for the suggestion.
@brendanpatten, based on the additional piece of info, that Always On is different between the two, I’m going to make the case that this is NOT a smartplug issue. Bottom line, is that you only have one monitor that is collecting data, including smartplugs, and that the monitor/cloud API only displays one view of real-time data. I would contact support@sense.com, because it sure feels like something is wrong on the cloud end, not with the monitor.
One more question for you - Is the Total Usage in the lower right one the Now/Bubble display the same or different between the phone app and the web app ? And what about the Power Meter display - same or different ?
The total is identical in real time with web vs phone app. Power meter, now page, shows same.
On the cell phone app I watched this morning as my fridge on the smart plug entered a defrost, usually about 400 watt, at first for about 10 seconds showed about 400 watt “Other” bubble, then was absorbed into the “always on” bubble
I might have been wrong about the always on bubble reading different. I think they remain the same. The total remains the same, just missing bubbles and devices on the cell phone, missing devices on the web site but bubbles DO show on website.
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@brendanpatten, thanks for the side-by-side. Those shots will probably also help you if you contact support@sense.com. Good to see that Always On and Total Usage match - that reduces the potential types of issues. Two things stand out in my mind:
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Either by choice or by chance, you’re operating in a domain where you have very little turned on in your house. I say that because your Bubble usage adds up to more than your Total Usage on your web app, which I presume to be the correct readings from the Sense cloud API. 88+113+153 = 354 which is greater than 324W of Total Usage. That’s why you are not seeing any Other (Total Usage minus the sum of Bubbles / on devices is less than zero).
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That same result is reflected on your phone app. So it looks like all your “special” Devices are reading the same - Total Usage, Always On and Other, even though you can’t see Other. It also looks like your phone app is reading the event transitions correctly from the Sense API, since it sees the Fridge turning On.
One other experiment you might want to try is to go into Devices > Fridge - Kitchen > Settings (gear in upper right) > Manage and try playing with the Standby settings. It looks like you might have already tuned this for your Fridge, looking at the Event List, but I’m wondering if tweaking it (and back again) might cause some configuration change that renews Bubble visibility.
Otherwise, this definitely looks like a support@sense.com kind of mystery.
ps: Which version of the App are you on ?
Yeah during day when everyone gone I try to get my always on as low as I can. (kind of the idea of having a tool like Sense)
my understanding the “Always On” bubble will include power usage from an identified device, so the total added up bubbles can be more then the total actual watts.
My smart plug devices are not listed in my devices, on the phone or web, so I can’t change the standby detection.
I have started an email to support. Hopefully I get further then last time I brought this up.
A few more thoughts:
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Yes, Always On will include the Always On component for devices on smart plugs, which will also be part of the Bubbles. So the Always On component for smart plugs with be double counted when it comes to doing the subtraction to determine Other, leaving Other a little smaller than it would be if that component wasn’t double counted. Sense does itemize the Always On component of each smart plug under the Always On device so you can do accounting of Always On “pieces” from different devices. You can also enter by hand.
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I thought you could see the smart plugs in the device list, at least for the web app. If you can’t, that seems like a definite problem on the Sense cloud end. Smart plug devices are almost impossible to get rid of since they maintain a real device history.
Good luck and let us know how it goes with support.
I can’t imagine this could be related to your network, as Sense is showing two different things.
Did you try disabling and re-enabling the Kasa integration & if so when?
If not would you be willing to disable (or Sense can manually disable) the Kasa integration? You WILL lose the history for the plugs.
If you are willing to try that, I’d suggest temporarily changing the plugs names in the Kasa app after disabling but before re-enabling. You can always change them back to the original names after you confirm they are working for a week or so and nothing else strange or unusual happens.
@JamesDrewAtSense what do you think?
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I went ahead and disabled the “tp-link energy monitoring smart plug” from the Integrations area of “connected devices” I thought I did that months ago when I first started having issues, or maybe didn’t want to loose data, anyways, did that this morning and it warned it would remove all data for those devices. When I did that and turned them back to enable. It did re-detect them, show up as normal but with no usage history. I guess that gets them working for now. Not so worried about usage history.
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Hi,
Sorry, I was late to the party I would have suggested more or less what @obscuredtrip said. If something isn’t showing up, it could be an API issue, and the integration needs to be disabled and re-enabled. You will lose data as the problem with smart plugs is data generated from them is tied to them.
@brendanpatten, I’m glad you got your issue resolved, and thanks everyone for being so quick to help!
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