I wish we had a place to post images of different devices categorized where we could compare.
Separate albums for heat pumps, water heaters, toasters, you get the idea.
It would really help when we can’t figure out what a device is by looking at history or waveform.
This is a wish for the forum @RyanAtSense
I bought Sense 14 months ago.
I hooked up Sense and sat back for a month because I truly couldn’t put time into it, but waited for discoveries, and waited until my work schedule would free-up time.
I had this very same thought you’re sharing as I began to tackle identifying my devices. I thought hard about this. I thought about this for months, but then I became much more savvy about pinpointing the device and resolving the device name. I learned a good portion of this through reading the forum in other people asking for help.
The reason I never asked for a library of wave forms is because I didn’t want a mess of human error…
My old fridge signature is very different from my new fridge I bought in July.
My clothes dryer has multiple stages of operation… how do I know when all stages were discovered as separate devices… did I merge them correctly?
If I wasn’t aware of the different power stages of my furnace/fan/heat pump combo… would I follow the correct wave form in a library of wave forms?
Another issue could be the occasional swapping device operation between a stove top burner and a coffee maker, I’ve experienced that, but this may not happen often.
I truly believe a pile of wave forms would have eaten up my time.
If I come to the forum and ask for help, not only will I get a wave form, but they’ll ask me for a copy of mine to help me out. Also, I’ll get the additional tips in sleuthing the device identification.
I know your post was meant for @Ryan, but I felt I’d share your post was a natural thought I had, too. Organizing and maintaining updates could be in vain and still produce the same posts that ask for help which produce amazing assistance and results.
I had thought about the same thing @MachoDrone and how I felt about it was we could see who posted their images and their “experience” level or how long they have been using sense. We would also know their time and contributions on the community. The fact that these are users suggestions would let us decide for ourselves how we wanted to use them.
Sense isn’t perfect, I’m new but I’ve already had several names given by sense that it felt confident about and they were completely wrong. The “Dishwasher” was the microwave and motor1 and 2 both being heating elements.
A lot of it would depend on just what people did share and just how confident they were. Keep in mind a lot of what would be shared would be devices that sense had named also.
If this idea somehow afffected anyone else’s sense then I would agree, I do like having the little bit of control we do have.
I’m looking forward to the day when a library wouldn’t be useful because sense can properly detect, identify and tag devices with better accuracy.
I’d like to add that It would be entirely up to someone whether they wanted to participate or not
The staff is discussing this now @samwooly1, but as the discussion continues we quickly uncovered many potential complications, some of which @MachoDrone covers above - with so many variables in play it may be a challenge to present actually useful information to the membership in the end.
That said, we do see some merit in at least some basic waveform examples to let new Sense users the differences between common devices (resistive, inductive, cyclical, etc), but it’s hard to say at this point if we’ll go so far as asking people to _proactively_post examples of anything and everything as it could get overwhelming quick, with a questionable ROI.
Im sure things aren’t as simple as I picture in my mind. I had also thought about things sense as a company wouldn’t appreciate people posting, Does it in anyway compromise intellectual property or things proprietary to their product.
There are probably complications well above my level of understanding about the subject. It is nice to know that things like this are thought of by others and on the radar. That tells me that eventually something will come of it and will be much better thought out, implemented and managed.
As @MachoDrone pointed it, we do have the ability to come to the community and post an image, then ask other members for their input.
I’ve learned quite a bit by watching and reading the topics when others have sought help.
It’s great to have a dedicated community where everyone is so helpful and willing to share.