My Sense experience and observations

[RyanAtSense]

Thanks for writing in about your experience. Let me respond to a couple of your points in turn.

@jdlow1959

I am doubtful it will get much better in resolving more devices in my home at this time, but their model is predicated on building a database from experiential data. So over time and with user cooperation it could conceivably get more accurate.

Why don’t you expect it to find more devices? 2 weeks is a pretty short period of time in Sense land (We advise reviewers to use Sense for 60 days before they evaluate). I’d definitely expect you to have more devices come online over the next few weeks.

@jdlow1959

They need to develop a broader user inclusive means for device detection. I can turn a device on and off and see the change in the consumption at a very fine granularity. I should be able to tell the system it is device XYZ. Unfortunately you cant today.

We hear you. We’re working on other ways to get ground truth data into Sense (NDI helps with that, as do smart home integrations, and we’ll be announcing a big one soon). A straight up “learn this” mode just isn’t feasible at this time. You can read more about why here: Why can't you train Sense?

@jdlow1959

am most concerned that if the company goes out of business or is acquired, that the device will essentially be rendered useless, or a new business model charging for the web based data base / monitoring will be enacted.

This is a fair point and something we’ve thought deeply about. We’re doing our best to create systems that would still give Sense functionality in the event that we have to close our doors. But, we’re very healthy and just got another big dose of funding, so we’re not too worried about that at the moment.