Impact of Normalization / Naming Standards when using Sense

[djharrity]

I’ve had Sense installed for exactly one month. In that time, Sense has detected 14 devices. As others have mentioned, the names often start out as Heat 1, Motor 1, and so on. I play detective and determine its real-world association to my furnace, baseboard heaters, clothes washer, sump pump and so on. In each case, I attempt to be very consistent and concise with the Name, Make, and Model database fields.

I’m curious if doing so, helps the community. As mentioned by Sense, as the community grows and more devices are detected, we each help improve others. But do we also hinder that detection and can being too exact potentially hurt (or delay improving) the community? For example, I had a Motion sensing light. Sense detected it in the first two weeks. For the Name field, I used the default ‘Motion sensing light’. For the Make field ‘Heath Company’ and for the Model field SL-5514-WH

In this example, other Sense customers may have the same device
a) Name = Motion sensing light, Security light, Front door light
b) Make = Heath, Heath Co., Heath Company
c) Model = SL-5514-WH, SL5514WH | NOTE: the -WH only means that it’s White in color.

So, here is my questions:

a) For the Model field, in the case of a known model number identifier for body color, would it help the community to be ‘more generic’ (e.g., SL-5514)? Otherwise being too specific may slow detection for another customer with a SL-5514-BL (black-colored unit).
b) Does the wide variety of ‘Name’ field entries hurt the community. Based on the Community postings, I’ve seen that many of us have some rather ‘creative’ ways of describing your electrical loads. Creative is code for using the Name field like a Notes field entry.
c) If/when a company has a merger/acquisition and is renamed, would Sense benefit from me using the current name of the company or the old one. For example, Sense detected my Sump pump in my utility room. The large metal plate states it’s built by the Hydr-O-Matic Pump Co. — I don’t know the model b/c I’m lazy and not going to open the sump cavity to find out. But I did an Internet search for When I searched for the Hydr-O-Matic Pump Co., and it appears they are now: Pentair Hydromatic.

[mike_gessner]

When i name mine i like to write the model number down in the app exactly like it is on the tag if i can find it BUT when i add the make name i will just write the generic name like LG instead of writing LG Electronics Inc. like i did for my washing machine.

[RyanAtSense]

First, thanks for caring about naming your devices! It really does help us. The names you give your devices directly feed the neural network that then feeds the Community Names feature (i.e., when you see a name and a percentage next to it when Sense finds a new device). As for make/model, those help as well, though a bit less directly. For Make/Model, your vocab there doesn’t need to be perfect as we have some backend means to make Sense of it. There’s a lot of manual processing we do on those. In the future, that may change, and we’ll be sure to provide firmer guidelines when that happens. In short, we don’t force anyone to name or provide that level of detail, but it gives us a bit more data when you do.

[mattlebaugh]

I’ve been using sense for years and also thought about this. That’s for the details Ryan. Maybe a help/information dialogue in the app next to the rename fields with this information could help users.