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.
I was actually thinking of posting this same suggestion, because it has taken me a little bit to figure out the different waveforms of the devices in my house, but now that I know what they are I can recognize them immediately. And I see that my devices often look similar to the screenshots from others (e.g. my fridge and other fridges, etc.).
Perhaps we can start doing this low key within the “Device Detection” thread in these forums? E.g. start a post of “Typical Refrigerator waveforms” and another for “Typical microwave waveforms” and so on, and then ask people to append their devices there?
Or perhaps that’d be cumbersome (too many threads) and it’d be easier to do a “Typical device waveforms” and put everything on one thread?
Comments? (@RyanAtSense @kevin1 @MachoDrone @oshawapilot @samwooly1 Just trying to get the attention of the key players in the forums) I can post several examples later today (some from smartplugs so very accurate), if others feel this is a good idea.
I think it was @RyanAtSense and @MachoDrone had pointed out how overloaded it would get. And if someone accidentally had the wrong device tagged then it would get confusing pretty quickly. My thoughts are having sense post typical waveforms for devices since they have actual “ground truth” data for many.
If we do it then we are likely to have hundreds where just having maybe five or ten of each would be more than enough.
That would be great, if Sense is willing to do that. I can provide the info on the devices that I have on smartplugs, and Sense would be welcome to use those data as examples, if useful.
Would you guys be willing to put together a well-curated entry like this ? If so we may have some ideas…
Bryant Forced Air Furnace
Make: Bryant
Model: 373LAV48095
Waveform source: Device Power Meter
How identified: Smartplug Identification
Additional Comments: Sample waveforms for both a full heating cycle including ignition blower, igniter and furnace blower, plus simple blower-only cycle.
Power Spec: 120V, Max Amps 10.2, Max Output 75,000 BTUh
Detailed View: Blower-only on the left, full heating cycle on the right
Whole Day View:
I don’t know about others @kevin1 but I sure wouldn’t mind to. Most of my 20 active devices are also highly accurate so the readings from their meters would be too. I do ha e a couple where only one leg is detected and wouldn’t want to include anything like that.
Would it be possible for a moderator to create a sub-forum for this and then maybe break down devices into categories from there? It might make it easier to find what someone is looking for without haveing to scroll through hundreds of posts and also easily searchable.
Another thing I sometimes do save space is to collage several pictures together with a free app. The app is PS EXPRESS and is and Adobe Photoshop product.
Just for an example here are theee our together of my heat pump. Single cycle, one hour and full day.
Thanks for volunteering. Subcategories might be nice. Right now we’re thinking about using a single category, with a topic per device, but tagged with the device type (yes, there are Discourse tags in this forum for virtually every device type, though we could add more). More info in a bit.
Nice collage. Gives 3 different perspectives, all side-by-side. But at least in your example, some of the info (time scales and measure line) are lost. Think we would like to keep things as simple as possible, based on simplest form of screenshots except for more savvy users like you.
There are many options for collage arrangement and format, this was just one. It is possible to do one without loss of surrounding information if one takes the time. Sorry, I was being a bit lazy about it.
