After all my appliance were installed, I went through and added Makes and Models for ALL my appliances, from A/C mini splits all the way down to my waffle iron and toaster oven. Recently my washing machine was detected. I confirmed what it thought was the washer was in fact and removed the “this is a guess” option. However, now it wants me to input Make and Model. Why can’t the Sense look in the inventory for a dryer and automatically add that?
On a related note, our oven is an electric double oven. It has found one heat element for it, but there are multiple per oven. Hopefully Sense is smart enough to keep adding more heating elements to this oven and not just saying it found one and is now done. I’ve seen at least once the toaster over show as on for both the oven and most recently the dishwasher.
Integration with Device Inventory should be easy and very slick.
As far as the oven goes, sense has no way to know how many ovens you have. So if it detects another component, it’d be up to you too merge them together into a single device.
Introduction of the inventory gives the Sense algorithm the possibility of exploiting the list to aid and match detections (that, I believe, was the intention) but there are a couple of things (at least) making this a non-trivial task:
There is no way to know if any given user-entered list is accurate or complete.
If a potential match is found, the level of confidence for the match needs to come after the “native” detection and confidence. That said the list can inform the algorithm but that is certainly a non-trivial task and presents a certain catch-22 in implementation.
I have confidence that Sense has this fairly high on their list of priorities because it could clearly improve detection and user experience. Not easy though.
Just as an FYI, the make and model in the Device list evolved two years before the whole house inventory was added. But I do expect an integration sometime that allows one to select the device in the inventory list as a menu item when a new device is found, and have all the data popular the device. The home inventory was a nice addition because it gives Sense a better idea of all the devices they should try and “find” along with the marketing data of which devices are most popular with their end users.
One important thing about Sense - it’s not there checking off items as they are found. It just keeps trying to categorize pairs or waveform transitions (on signatures and off signatures), without really directly referring to your inventory list… So things don’t really get easier to identify as the list gets shorter, as some users surmise. And there are many cases when different components of the same device are recognized separately and may need to be merged.
Kevin, this was exactly the scenario I was picturing. While it would be cool for Sense to search model numbers and find the various elements or electrical draw for appliances, I 100% understand how extremely difficult that would be. I specifically was thinking that when my washer was found and 98% of the Sense community labeled it a washer, why then did I need to retype make and model after confirmation when that’s already in the inventory. Sounds like I’m not the only one to think of this and look forward to this, and all the other features to come, over the coming years.