Welcome @Philip ! You sound like a data enthusiast. I’m going to point you, and hopefully additional new users to some expectation-setting education that I think is helpful for most tech-literate users. LMK if it helps.
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@kevin1 This is helpful, thank you. I can appreciate the challenge the data science teams have for modeling all of these things. My expectations are hopefully already set and in line with this reality. I know it’s a journey we’re all on, and I’m glad to contribute to it and appreciate Sense taking on the challenge.
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Sounds like you have quite the setup. Reefing sure is an expensive, time consuming, delicate hobby that feels more like mad science experiment. A little less mad scientist and more data scientist if you have the Trident. I have neither, always trying to win one at local fest raffles, but I always seem to end up winning salt & cheap test kits. I’m determined lol
As far as Sense goes with aquariums, Sense probably won’t natively detect anything other than the heaters. All mine have been detected behind a basic temperature controller. Heaters have a stable on/off signature whereas most everything else uses 12v, is always on or uses minimal wattage. Most of my equipment is on a couple Kasa HS300 powerstrips that integrate with Sense, anything critical is also on UPS’s. Nothing compared to a Neptune system that does soooo much more. I highly recommend Sense add on CT’s clamps if you reef is on a dedicated circuit(s) & you don’t have solar or whole home generator you want to monitor.
The biggest electrical expense with tanks is naturally the heaters. Tight lids and enclosed skimmer help a lot, I was surprised. I run my skimmer air intake outside, the stable co2 helps with the PH but does negate some of the savings when it’s freezing out.
Sense is pretty good detecting Sump pumps (the non reefer kind) a major bonus knowing when it eventually fails before the house floods.
I’m sure you will find Sense labs power quality graphs extremely useful with all that critical equipment.
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@obscuredtrip @Philip this might be a selfish request, but I’d love to see a photo of your reef aquariums!
Hello my name is Walter J
New user
I am a master electrician. I recently built a home with all electric utilities including variable speed air source ducted heat pumps. 22 kw of solar and a backup generator. I was hoping to evaluate what my appliances were using and see what I was generating. So far after a week, I am not really understanding what sense does except show me in real time my total consumption. Is there anyway to manually add devices within the house? So far after a week sense has only detected four appliances and I can’t find them despite turning circuit breakers off. Any help would be appreciated
Hi there @walternowicki - welcome to Sense! There are a few things that could help you here that I’m sharing below.
- 10 Steps to Getting Started with Sense : If you haven’t familiarized yourself with the features in Sense, this is a great resource for a step-by-step breakdown of how you can get the most out of Sense including how to set your electricity rate and how to track progress and set goals.
Here are a couple resources on how we recommend tracking down unknown devices.
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“I can’t find a mystery device”
“What’s that Unnamed Device? ” is a deep look at some of the potential mystery devices in a home that could be part of a larger appliance (like a motor and a heating element). If you’re still having trouble figuring out a mystery device, you can post detailed information to the Device Detection category so community members can help!
Here are a couple features/integrations that can help you add more devices to Sense.
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Using Sense with Smart Plugs : Our smart plug integration allows for instant detection for devices. I currently use several Kasa HS-300’s to monitor my entertainment center and office. With the smart plugs we integrate with, you can name the device plugged into each individual outlet and that information (and data) will be visible within Sense. Learn more about the types of Smart Plugs that Sense supports here. @kevin1 published a great response that highlights the different status of a smart plug in Sense here.
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Sense Always On Estimates allow you to enter in Always On wattage estimates for devices that are “always on” in your home. You can learn more about the feature here:
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I’m Nikkolai and I’m new to Sense!
Just had it installed a month now and still figuring things out.
Happy to join the community to learn from you all and share my experiences with smart home devices.
I work in logistics and transportation in the Caribbean
Irie!
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Hi, my name is Ken and we installed Sense in October of 2019. While I love the idea/concept of the device, it’s certainly taken a lot of patience to extract useful data.
Recently we started using smart plugs and discovered our TV was terribly inefficient in standby. So I configured IFTTT to turn off the switch when the TV disconnected from the network, saving us about $40/year! Now I’m looking for other devices to do the same and continuing to learn more about Sense.
I work in the insurance industry as a software developer. While we face many of the same challenges as other industries, the wide spread of data inputs, rule variations, and complex formulas, make for interesting problems to solve.
As for bbq, well I like to grill unique things like pizza and lobster, but I love a good pulled pork or brisket 
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How do I create a topic?? The system does not seem to want to let me do so… ?
Welcome Ken!
I have a similarly shocking experience when i added an energy monitoring plug to my TV stand equipment.
Now i run a routine in Alexa to turn off the plug outside of watching hours.
Irie!
Hi @petzany - there’s a 24 hour hold on new users permissions to post a new thread while they learn about the breakdown of the community forums. I’ve adjusted your permissions and you should be good to go!
Hi @DigitalKen - welcome to the Community! Your story about your TV savings sounds perfect for sensesaves.sense.com!
Hi my name’s Jim - I’m a film editor/producer and own a post production company in LA. At home we do our best to steer towards carbon neutral - 6kw of solar panels, EV, use green power supplied by Edison, eat vegan/vegetarian about half the week (we call it ‘reducitarians’), composting at home (but buy way too much crap on Amazon…). Installed Sense for Solar about a month ago and just haven’t gotten it working right - it shows usage either tracking solar generation exactly or solar pushes usage below zero - it alternates back and forth. Been emailing with support for a while and hopefully will fix it? But I love the data. And while BBQ is nice I lean towards pizza these days… got an Ooni and love it.
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Hi, my name is Dave. I am an engineering director at an automotive supplier making systems for EVs. I wanted to gain some 1st hand experience and bought an EV for personal use. Trying to understand the impact of charging on my older home brought me to Sense, most interest in the Sense Labs projects. We seem to have some kind of EV charger interaction happening at night. I can’t get it to reproduce during the day, and staying up all night to watch a battery charge → well, you can guess it was an easy decision to get a data logger. 24 hours in and one EV charge later, still no problems detected. Looking forward to support from this great community if/when something is detected.
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Bought my Sense in July 2016… finally installed it this Monday. Happy to say install went flawlessly and it seems to be working. Have a few hue bulbs, Echo/Dots, and that’s about it. Right now looking at dishwasher hacking.
Curious how long it takes before big devices show up. Have 3 refrigerator/freezer combos, dishwasher, washer/dryer, and deep freeze - after 3 days only 1 motor detected.
Cheers
@squashy
Welcome ! There’s a question of time and also whether the devices to be discovered fit Sense’s current sent of detection paradigms. More on that here:
Just got my Sense installed, but not sure if I have the partial generator setup right. Came here to get some assistance with setup.
Try searching the forum with the keyword generator to become familiar with the different setups and constraints. Plenty has already been written. One example.
Hello to all in the forum, my name is Chris and I live in Kingwood which is a bit to the northeast of Houston, Texas. I had been seeing lots of pop up ads in my FaceBook and Instagram feeds and was intrigued with the idea of Sense. Then last month I bought a portable generator to use to power my home when the lights go off which does happen quite a bit in this area due to freezes in the winter and tropical storms and hurricanes in the summer. But I couldn’t see shelling out as much as they want for the whole house generators, the one I got puts out about 7500 watts, 9800 peak. I installed a 50 amp circuit and receptacle for back feeding the power into my electric panel and figured that having Sense made good sense since I would like to have an idea of which circuits and devices I can turn on when using the generator.
I have done basic electrical work before, running circuits, installing switches and outlets or new breakers so I felt ok with doing the work. I have a 200 amp service and had enough room for the generator breaker which acts more like a switch and also a space for the Sense breaker. Only problem is that the way my panel was wired it was a very tight fit to get Sense into the box (ours is outside on the back of the house so Sense had to be inside the breaker box) but I was able to move some wires so Sense could be installed.
It came right on and I checked it using the app on my phone and I also like that I can see Sense on my computer. It’s only been 5 days but it discovered my dryer right away (never realized how much an electric dryer pulls). It will be interesting to see what else the AI discovers. We have 3 fridges, an electric oven and also a high efficiency central AC unit; it has a multi speed compressor so it will be interesting to see what Sense thinks it is as it draws very little power for an AC.
So I am here to learn from others and also to share when I discover or learn something on my unit.
Have a nice day!
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