My “Kitchen Main” switch turns on 9 bulbs. I use LED, but even LED don’t last as long as advertised. Which means over a year or two, one or two bulbs will fail. As a result, Sense no longer recognizes the “Kitchen Main” switch, and then needs to learn again from scratch
Unfortunately, Sense hasn’t learned my Kitchen Lights again, since it stopped recognizing them 3 months ago. This is probably the most used switch in the house (other than the fridge cycle)
Not sure what to do, but again being able to provide ground truth to Sense would help…
It could be considered a good thing if Sense didn’t recognize a lighting system that suddenly started using >10% less power - that could be the basis of an alert that a bulb had failed and not been noticed, but let’s park that thought.
If, after replacing a failed bulb, Sense didn’t start recognizing Kitchen Lights again, that’s concerning, especially if you replaced like with like (same manufacturer as well as wattage etc). A different manufacturer could be using a different driver circuit to convert AC to low voltage DC, which could change the characteristics of the switch on transient and on-going frequency content, but not much if you only replace 1 bulb, or even the same manufacturer could “improve” (aka reduce cost) of their rectification / regulation circuit.
If what’s happening is as I suggest above (it’s not started recognizing it again), it’s worth an e-mail to support@sense.com, so they can investigate the specifics of what you are seeing and pass on to the folk who build the models.
My lighting detection is not going well - have converted to over 90% LED while using sense and none of the groups of LEDs have been detected yet.
In over a year, initially with CFL’s and now with 95% LED lighting (even the flood lights over the garage, etc), Sense has yet to find a single light or group of lights. At the moment, only the remaining fluorescent tubes in my shop and one incandescent floodlight (four stories up) that hardly ever gets turned on draw significant power, and Sense hasn’t seen those either.
That said, since my total lighting load is less than one of our ovens, or our dryer, or out stove top, or our well, etc, I’m much less concerned with Sense missing LED’s than with it missing large/very large consumers of power. I guess I just need to be more patient…what’s a year waiting for meaningful results ))-;).
Yeah, there is the bigger problem with Sense not finding the big things. I got about a dozen lights and a dozen everything else. Another problem is not finding anything anymore after an initial rush. Mine hasn’t really found anything in the last 12+ months, and is now losing what it had.
I do find the lights add more awareness value of what’s going on in the house than e.g. the dishwasher, but that’s just me. And I do have one Halogen that draws some 300W.
I replaced LED with LED, but different model/manufacturer. I think first one failed, then I replaced one, then another failed, then I replaced two more (for looks/symmetry)
And yes, there is opportunity here if Sense would detect the change, instead of just not recognizing things anymore. Like telling me: hey, you normally turn on your kitchen lights every day, but you didn’t the last few days - and nothing else changed, so you are probably not on vacation. Please tap on the ‘re-learn kitchen lights button’ and turn the lights on and off 5 times, waiting 5 seconds between each action. And put a timer on the screen.
It all comes back to the old topic of learning only based on sensor data, or more information. Letting it learn of WiFi is a first step. But knowing that a certain group of lights is n bulbs, might help it recognize failure of one (drop of ~1/nth of the load).
@biz.1, you make an excellent point in that, as a consumer product, detection shouldn’t have to be gone through again because you’ve changed the brand (and presumably rectification circuitry because it didn’t recognize the the kitchen lights immediately you replaced the bulb).
So can the detection algorithms be adjusted to deal with a selection of rectification circuits among equal-rated LEDs?
That’s a question, no it’s a reasonable challenge for the data scientists on the Sense team.
The ongoing detection process (once a device has been detected) relies on many parameters and reasonably rules out owner-teaching helping the initial detection of each device - they’re using months of data averaged and analysed in some cases to distinguish a device from the total usage.
However I think the idea of user-assisted re-learning is a much easier task as it should involve opening up the parameters that define each device while you go through a re-learning process and then tightening them back up once the difference between new and old bulbs has been characterized.
This could also apply to moving a kettle or toaster to a different circuit, which can cause it not to be recognized for a considerable time, for good reasons technically, but not something that the average user should have to deal with.
I’m tagging @BradAtSense, who outside his former forum moderation role is one of the product definition guys.
That happened to me too… the lights in the master bathroom were detected, but after I had to replace one, it doesn’t track them anymore. Another thing is my light in the pantry. It has been discovered and then disappeared at least 3 or 4 times. Currently, it is gone again. I can see it listed in the history, but it no longer even shows up in the device list.
Actively following this thread. It’s definitely brought up an edge case for us that we have to think on. Thank you for bringing it up @biz.1, this is something we’ve got to work on down the road.
Interestingly, a few weeks after I changed one bulb in the master bath lights, Sense has started picking them up again (although I’m not sure how reliable it is, I just noticed yesterday I started seeing them in my usage list again). And my pantry light was discovered (again)! I hope that one sticks around this time
I’m having a similar issue, though I figured it would happen. After sense had identified most of the major lights in our house, we have gone and replaced most of the light bulbs from regular to LED. They are no longer recognized. Once sense starts recognizing them, will it detect them as a new device or will it adapt the old device to the new one? Obviously I can merge or delete the old ones, just didn’t know how sense would operate with this sudden change.
Incandescent conversion to LED is treated as whole new swath of devices with completely different signatures… I’m guessing even different brands of LEDs will look different to Sense unless they use the exact same electronics.
That’s what happened to me, mine were already LED bulbs when Sense detected them. I had to change one and it stopped recognizing on/off. Now though, it seems to pick it up, although not as reliably as it did before. Kind of strange, it seems to always get when the light is on in the morning, but not at night. Maybe noise interference?
I have six halogen bulbs on one switch in my master bath. When one died, Sense (obviously) stopped detecting it. Replacing it with a similar halogen bulb restored detection.
I’ve measured actual consumption on bulbs (particularly Halogen) to be less than the power rating would indicate. Not sure why, but pretty consistent across vendors. Six Halogens is a LOT of power, probably what all of the lights in my house…except shop fluorescents…are combined.
In recent years I’ve been able to replace almost all of my Halogens with LED, even large yard floodlights, and highly recommend doing so. The one exception is the pesky fixture in the MBR shower, but fortunately that doesn’t run all that much.
Most of ours lights are LED. I have a couple kitchen and dining room fixtures still halogen or incandescent as they are in clear glass fixtures with clear bulbs on dimmers. The LED equivalents that have the old squirrel cage look just can’t dim low enough yet.
