Just making an observation … you post a lot in the community (731 times) and yet you made the statement that it’s wasting your time. If installing it was wasting that much of your time, what keeps you coming back here voluntarily?
Now, on the first part of what I quoted, I’ve also talked a lot about how the Sense marketing team has a tough challenge. I’ve been in startups and I know it’s not easy and a lot of times you stretch the truth, embellish etc. As a consumer we have reviews, we have corporate history, we have investment history and the list goes on. Ultimately, it’s up to us to do the research and decide if something is right for us especially if you feel it’s an expensive purchase.
Before I purchased Sense I saw the reviews, but I also had a Generac monitor that was 1000x worse. I decided to go with Sense because I intimately know the technology behind it, I understand it’s limitations (based on my career in tech) and I decided it would be something that I would commit to the long haul on.
It appears that you got the monitor some 4-5 years ago, so you were really early in. Unfortunately, AI relies on data and when you just start a company, you don’t have much of that. In Sense’s case, we provide them the data to make the product better, just by using electricity. Since the company is still newish (they got their first real money less that 5 years ago), there’s a lot they just haven’t got enough data for yet. There’s noise issues that they haven’t sorted out (in AI this is called dirty data), but eventually I think it will get there.
Here’s an analogy. There’s millions of Tesla’s out there and they are the biggest experiment, using a purchased product, that we’ll likely see in our lifetime. No one would accept a Porsche with the poor workmanship and fit/finish that Tesla put out on a $110k model S. But people bought into the vision and they still continue to fork out stupid amounts of money (10k for autopilot) for something that they essentially developed by driving down the road. Tesla and Sense are similar in that we purchased something (we in a general sense, because I would never buy a Tesla) and they use our consumption of the product to develop a better product through the use of data gathering, AI/ML/DL.
Sense will get better, but we have to remember that if we discourage people from purchasing a Sense, if we don’t educate people on why Sense needs more data, then we will only do harm to our own investment. I’m not advocating the Sense is perfect by any means. I’m not advocating that we don’t criticize, because I have. I think their biggest issue is marketing, as I’ve said in other posts. I think education about how it works and how to maximize your expectations is needed.
I have just a handful of discovered devices. I think I got 3 new ones yesterday so I’m up to 8ish natively discovered. It’s like Christmas every time I see the little Sense icon. For me, Sense is just another tool in my home automation arsenal. I purchased Sense, in part, because of the integrations and the ability for me to dissect the data on my own.
I guess what I’m getting at is, I don’t think you’re out of their scope. Furthermore, I think if they told everyone on the day of release the truth, almost everyone would have been out of their scope. Elon didn’t tell people his cars came with crazy panel gaps, bumpers that fell off when it rained, windshields that leaked, etc etc. Would he have ever sold any, I think not.
I have faith that the more people who use Sense, the more you, me and every Sense user will benefit. It’s just the harsh reality of data science. For the OP, and possibly for you, some of the electrical items you have might not be as commonplace, and those will likely require more time to find. I’ll leave you with a famous data science line, which is more appropriate for this company because of their name … “Data science doesn’t make any sense without data.”
