I’m not sure I understand the point here? The issue I raised initially was that Sense (for me) has been unable to reliably identify a majority of the high energy consumption devices in my house. And those that are identified frequently are abandoned by Sense after short periods, thereby providing no useful data about those devices. If all anyone wanted was to know their overall consumption after the fact they could simply look at their electric bill. For me the entire point of acquiring the Sense was to gain real-time data about electrical device consumption in my home for the purpose of energy and cost reduction (if possible). My Sense device was equally accurate (to the person who referred to their utility bill) in terms of the overall consumption at the end of the month. But that’s not why I bought it. What I purchased the Sense for (device detection and monitoring) it never provided, even though that is what it promises.
The major electric hogs in my home were the first detected on I total install and also since I’ve factory reset.
Have you talked to support? There could be one device that is creating “noise” in your home that will keep Sense from detecting devices.
Variable speed pumps seem to be number one offender.
There will be some Sense users, like yourself, who see the ML core of Sense as “crippling” and others who view it as a path to a simpler-to-deploy, more universally applicable and ultimately more informative method for energy use tracking. Circuit-level power measurement doesn’t go far enough (and look at the bill that your Utility sends you for another circuit-level solution!) and is more complex to deploy universally, for most. I for one have multiple devices on the same circuit.
I would ponder these systems at scale … the largest being, I suppose, “if everybody has one” and the smallest being “per-circuit drill-down into the energy use of multiple devices, including the behavior of components within those devices”. {Fridge light anyone?}. That “per-circuit” can be seen as a dedicated device on a circuit (great, can we get the fridge light?); multiple devices on one circuit (hard); OR your mains is the circuit in question (very hard); AND at grid scale (where the ML actually begins to have a chance) the problem becomes extremely hard because it also has to deal with the economies of scale.
If “lack of data detection is crippling”, I’m not sure you’re going to find a better option than Sense at the moment because the option you’re talking about isn’t doing so much detection as it is simply integrating watts.
I’m wondering what others think when it comes to device detection and where the line is drawn on whether they think it’s a success, failure or something in between.
My personal take on it is that the big electricity users need to be detected. That’s my heat pump, water heater, floor heater and stove/oven.
So just having those four makes me feel like device detection is very successful.
Are there certain devices you feel need to be detected?
Is there a minimum number of detections you feel are necessary for success?
Yes! Heat pumps (2), water heater, stove and dryer. My Sense never detected any of them. If it had even gotten one of them I’d feel somewhat different.
Hate to hear that @jgoodnough2
Do you know why? Do you ha e geothermal or some other variable speed “noisy” device?
Device Detection: ABSOLUTE SUCCESS
Sense User Since: January 2018
Goal/Objective: (Successfully Maintain Consistent Lower Monthly Electrical Bill) - Identify consumption values, affording clear data-based decisions - relative to efficient energy usage.
Detected Top energy consumers identified
- Air Conditioning
- Furnace
- Garage Door
- Major Appliances (Refrigerator, Dishwasher, Microwave, Washer, and Dryer)
- Minor Appliances (Keurig, Garbage Disposal, and Attic Fan)
- Light Groupings (Multiple CFL bulbs on the same power source)
Undetected Items (Reflected within the “OTHER” bubble)
- Dual Zone Furnace - Detects only (1 of 2) zones
- TVs - None of the (3) televisions are detected (two are the same make/model)
- Ceiling Fans - None of the (3) fans are detected
- LED Bulbs - None of the groupings or single-bulb instances are detected
I agree. I’m in almost 3.5 years with Sense and it still can’t reliably find or remember my largest energy users - refrigerator, heat pump water heater, dryer, AC, pool pump. It’s more of a ‘that’s interesting’ rather than ‘where does my energy go? thing’. They said they’ve been working on improving their detection algorithms from the start, but I haven’t seen any real improvement.
I’m not sure why folks who have legit complaints are being mocked by others in this thread. Sense was sold to me as a way to identify my electricity usage by device. If it cannot do that consistently for even the most obvious devices, then it’s not doing what it was sold to me to do. I’ve had my Sense since 2016. My primary objective was to identify the power hogs in my home and their patterns. One of the most obvious power hogs is my commercial espresso machine. It has a dual-coil element that uses 2300W of power when it turns on, which happens once every 2-3 minutes (depending upon ambient temperature) and stays on for 30-40 seconds. It’s a 110v element, so it’s running on just one phase of our input power. It’s as regular as clockwork and the power spike is a nice clean square on the power graph. When I first installed my Sense box it detected the device readily enough, I named it “Espresso Machine Boiler”, and I began monitoring it. Less than a year later, one of the two coils in the heating element failed and the device dropped down to drawing 1500W of power, and when it came on it stayed on for over a minute. Sense didn’t see it as the boiler any more, which I understand, but Sense never brought it up as anything else either, even though it was again as regular as clockwork. About 8 months later I found a replacement element and installed it, and now it’s back to drawing 2300W, coming on once every 2-3 minutes and remaining on for 30-40 seconds. It’s still regular as clockwork. However, Sense has never re-detected it at all, and it remains in the “unknown” category, even though its graph looks like this:
That’s a device that a three-year old should be able to recognize on a graph.
So I have to agree with others, I’ve relied less and less on this thing, because the device tree is nearly completely useless. According to Sense I’ve been steadily buying refrigerators, washers and dryers, pumps, etc. - Sense thinks I have 6 dryers, 5 refrigerators, etc. and none of these devices has any regular pattern that can be discerned. Most of them, in fact, appear to have only shown up once or twice, according to their graphs.
At this point I guess deleting my whole database and starting over might be something to try, but is it going to help in the long run? I’m not confident that it will. And a loss of confidence from the customer is never good for the business selling to that customer.
Sincerely,
J.
I am relatively new to sense, 11 or 12 days, and below is what it has found so far. I did ask a question after day two or three if the unit I purchased two weeks ago was any different that the original units and the response from sense was only minor changes to filters. That may be a factor but I am inclined to think that new users like me are benefiting from the earlier adopters naming devices that have been detected on their units. I have reached out to support two or three times and found them very responsive with feedback / fixes.
When the wife leaves for a few days I’ll hunt down and properly describe some of the recent detection’s such as Motor 2 and Heat 4 
file:///D:/Home/Sense%20#2.GIF
file:///D:/Home/Sense%20#3.GIF
When it comes to these devices that heat “like clockwork”, Sense has a problem. I have a Keurig with dual elements that fires the 1500 watt element when brewing a cup and the has a 250 watt element that comes on for approximately 5 seconds for every minute that it’s powered on or in standby. That small element has never been detected.
Changing that element of your I would t expect to resurrect the original 2300 watt detection. I had a water heater that I installed and had to replace due to a leak within 2 weeks. It had been detected when I replaced it with exactly the same model from the same store with all the same wiring, piping and hardware. Guess what? My water heater detection was now not working and a new detection came a bit later. There was just enough difference somewhere, I think in the on/off signatures as the wattage was nearly identical at 4660 watts.
I can understand your frustration and I ha e griped at times about things that show detected in the marketing, line garage openers and pumps, for which mine have not been detected.
I don’t feel like the marketing says Sense will detect all devices. That’s actually a problem. They don’t need to say it will detect all but they do need to give an idea of what to expect as far as numbers go. What is the average detection rate at different periods of time and what will not be detected.
They know that if a home has a something like a geo thermal variable speed deep well pump that it’s going to create enough noise to make any detections unlikely. This should be made perfectly clear. A list of devices that hamper detection for the device itself or any other devices would be the right thing to do.
They do say some things that won’t be detected like things that are always on, why not tell all?
I can understand that feeling you mention of feeling mocked when bringing up legitimate complaints, been there many times. I hope that doesn’t keep trouble from interacting here on tweets community.
I’ve gone both ways with my comments. If there is reason to praise Sense then that’s what I do, if there is a valid complaint then I voice that also. It sounds like my overall personal experience has been better than yours and hate to hear that it hasn’t been imprint for you.
I also did a factory reset recently. I’m having mixed results. I did get most of my major hogs back within a week, other things I had before are slow coming but it’s been less than 2 weeks. Part of my goal with the reset was to see if Sense would pick up on some of the devices it had not before. Time will tell.
Being that your dissatisfied, maybe a reset would be a good thing. I went with the factory reset hoping to erase all old data.
If you decide to do it, would love to hear your results.
Why aren’t you sharing your alternative monitor?
I find the sense useful for showing overall consumption, I can toggle devices and see the power going up/down
I am skeptical you have anything with close to the features & Ui for this price point
When I’ve researched other monitors, and I don’t research or anything else halfway, nobody has a monitor that compares to Sense.
I’m especially speaking of device detection. While others may do some things different or some may argue, better, device detection is where Sense stands leaps and bounds above.
There are others with some level of detection but it’s different and also requires additional clamps and/or wiring.
I ha e yet to find anyone doing as much through 2 clamps and 2 loaded wires.
Brand new user here and I just installed my Sense on Wednesday of this week. So far it has discovered one of my heat pumps and a few fridges.
It’s concerning to hear that detected devices are or can be automatically deleted. Why would that happen? I see we can rename a device, merge it with another, and manually delete it but it would be awesome if we can flag it not to be automatically deleted unless I am missing something in my few days of use. I can understand that an unverified device like one of my “fridge” devices that I haven’t confirmed what it is yet could be removed but once I determine it’s correct it should stay.
Two things:
Sense will sometimes rename or merge a device. It is only supposed to do this if you have NOT named it, or if you have named it, but ticked the “this is a guess” box. Something not named, or marked “this is a guess” tells Sense that if Sense thinks it knows better, it can name the device.
Its also worth noting that if Sense named a device Fridge, that is different than you naming it Fridge, so Sense could rename that. There have been several examples of devices being altered by Sense when a user insisted that they had named it, but then in reality, it was a Sense named device. There was also a short time (about 3 weeks) when there was a bug and Sense was renaming / deleting / merging devices that it should not have, but that was fixed.
What I think @jgood is referring to is that devices can lose their detection. It is not that it is deleted, but device called Fridge for instance may stop getting detected. Then Sense may find “another” fridge (Fridge 2) and start tracking that, but it is actually the same Fridge it had been tracking a month before.
This happens. The only way I can explain why is that because something changed in the house that made the fridge look different to Sense. To give a not great analogy. For work, you have to talk to someone everyday on the phone, but for security reasons, you are not allow to talk back to them, only listen and they can not tell you their name. You don’t know their name, but you learn to recognize their voice and pattern of speaking. You create a name for them in your head because we are humans and we categorize things. That person has an accident and something changes their voice. Since they never told you their name, the next time they call, you don’t recognize their voice. The words they are saying seem familiar, but its a different voice. You give that person a new name because you don’t recognize the voice.
Now maybe over time, because the pattern of words they are telling you are similar to something else you had heard in the past, you decide that you think the new person is actually the old person, so you re name them to the first name you remembered.
It may be elsewhere in this thread, but I find seasons change detections. Heating to cooling season has resulted in devices looking different in my home. DHW circulator gets detected quite well in the winter, but in summer season when 2 x AC units run for 8-10 hours a day, that power signature seems to get masked by the AC, so I don’t get the detections any more.
It is also worth nothing that any time your Sense finds something, assume that it means "Component of ". So your detected Fridge may just be the compressor. Your detected AC is the compressor, but not the air handler or dampers or other bits and bobs that you consider “AC”
I had “two” dishwashers, but in actuality, it was the same unit, but different parts (heating element vs pump). Once I figured that out, I merged them.
It’s actually a pretty good analogy.
For whatever reason I had “All your base are belong to us” in my head while reading your post. Perhaps this is because, to stretch your analogy, at least you know all the phone calls are legitimate business calls vs robocalls.
@ben’s points on when devices get renamed are correct. Sense will only rename devices that are either marked as a guess or have not been manually renamed.
As for losing good detections, check out this blog: Behind the Scenes: When Good Devices Go Bad - Sense Blog
Yea, I say treat sense as a clamp on watt meter, with the beta features of individual device detection. I’ve had sense for a few months so far, I got it to monitor the total draw, and solar output which it does fine for me… It has detected the stuff shown below (17 devices), but a “training” feature would be nice, maybe you shut off all breakers/devices in the house and turn on only the device to train. I dont know… My pool pump turns on/off the same time every day and has not been discovered, but sense did pick up on the more random devices, well pump, hot tub heater, stuff like that… I’ll continue to use it as a dual smart home clamp meter and treat the device detection as one of the bells & whistles. Seems we are all beta testers, maybe the beta testers can get some Sense shirts sent to all of us for our free data we are supplying… 
Office Hue Color (10w): How did you get Sense to detect this small usage amount? Is the device connected via a particular Smart Plug or is it a special smart device?
If you are using the Hue integration, Sense doesn’t detect it. Hue supplies an estimate to Sense based on individual bulb formulas…