Lots and lots of new people! Welcome!
Hello from Lakeside, Montana
What brought you here? Joined the community to see what else i can do with sense and to see if others are having issues with the initial signal check.
How long have you been using Sense? 2 days now.
What do you do for work? Network Security Architect
What other smart home tech do you have? 70+ IoT devices so far, nothing with a microphone… 
Mainly use off the shelf devices flashed with alternative firmware or customer hardware. Combined with HomeAssistant to automate my home. Also have a few cloud connected devices: EcoBee Thermostats, Rheem EcoNet HW Heaters, and now Sense!
What’s your favorite type of barbecue? As in the cooking apparatus a nice gas grill and the occasional long slow smoke in a good cabinet smoker. Food slow smokes and dry rubs…
Have a Twitter handle? @techparalysis
Hello,
I have 2 Sense units; installed 1 about a week ago, the second one yesterday. I have two 200-amp panels with separate feeds (from the meter). My monthly bill says that we use twice as much electricity as our average neighbor. I want to understand how that can happen.
I manage a Gov. research lab. Designed/built many electromechanial devices over the years. Legitimate education/skills in electronics. Seasoned DIYer at household wiring (under the tutelage of electricians in the family).
Set up 2 accounts. The web app doesn’t like me tyo have both open at the same time. It makes me login when I switch back and forth in split screen mode. Only a minor annoyance.
Both units are displaying the 50% complete message: “Hmm… Sense identified a problem with your installation. We’ll try to fix it automatically. …” message. The meter seems to be accurate as I verified with my amp probe. Its been about 12-14 hours. I’ll give it another day.
Welcome, Vincent.
This doesn’t sound too abnormal. Signal check can take up to 48h to complete. It sounds like one of your CTs may be backwards or some other installation issue is present. If it takes longer than that, definitely reach out to the Support team. I would encourage you to just let Sense do its thing and not try to fix it manually, unless Support requests you to do so.
Installed sense a few weeks ago and saw that the unit had trouble differentiating between the water heater and my hydronic boiler. It thought the second stage of the boiler was a water heater and probably stopped looking for the water heater.
Right now I have the CTs hooked up to just the water heater to see if it can figure that device out - it’s been 4 days and no device detected yet (only one device on the circuit) so I’m not terribly impressed and it may be going back.
Since I have two panels and cannot hook the ct up before the feed is split it is a struggle to have sense look at my entire home. That is definitely something which should be addressed - to hook in a second set of current transformers shouldn’t be that hard.
Welcome ! 2 days is a very short period for detection. Wait a month or so before thinking that it can’t make the a detection - putting a single device on the CTs might not speed detection. And not sure placing CTs on only one device is such a good idea either. Even after Sense detects the water heater in isolation, detection in the mix is a whole new learning curve.
It initially detected the water heater when it was in the whole panel but it detected one element of the boiler in reality. There didn’t appear to be a way to unlearn this which can be an issue.
I’m trying to figure out if I want to keep this as there is no way for me to tell it “sorry guess again” when it misdetects a device.
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@kjhein1999, a couple general themes you’ll pick up reading through the detection forum:
- Patience - Detections can take a while and can evolve over time, for good or for bad. So don’t treat a pickup of only half a load (a single leg) as something that you have to fix. Sense’s return policy is generous enough, so you shouldn’t have to hurry results.
- Let Sense do its thing - there are a few ways to help train Sense, outlined in the link below. Trying to speed the training process via other approaches might not be helpful.
The "Training" Challenge and How You Can Help - Sense Blog
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Hi All,
My name is mark and I am a semiconductor engineer.
I am here because I want to learn / understand more about Sense’s device learning algo. In particular (at least right now), why it does not over a guided learning mode. Or at least the opportunity to provide some input… I type this in my kitchen and my the compressor on my fridge just kicked on. Or, how does sense sort out dimmer switches… Lots of questions… so far it has identified 4 devices.
I got the Sense installed over the holidays and it has been running for almost a week. No smart hub / speakers in the house, but lots of phones, TVs, laptops, gaming systems. And after many barbecues, I still think charcoal is the best, but I am a Weber Gas grill guy - awesome product / support.
Cheers
Welcome, Mark! The “training” question comes up quite a bit, and understandably so — it seems obvious! Unfortunately, it’s just not so simple. I recommend checking out this blog to learn a bit more: The "Training" Challenge and How You Can Help - Sense Blog
I am also running HA - so far its just total usage data coming in from Sense, and a few binary sensors based on discovered devices. I wish HA would pull in energy usage for discovered devices. Clearly we’re reporting this data to Sense - so it would be nice to be able to pull it BACK into HA.
What brought you here?
My dad gave me a Sense for Christmas - very exited to get started
How long have you been using Sense?
Installed 26 DEC 2019. A few devices discovered so far (Fridge, basement freezer, microwave, coffee maker) and a few ghost discoveries that I can’t figure out yet.
What do you do for work?
Boring stuff.
What other smart home tech do you have?
I have been messing with Home Assistant (HA) for the last few months, and have been able to integrate about 12 TP-Link outlets and in-wall switches, my Wyze cams, and a number of Wyze contact and motion sensors. I am stoked about integrating Sense into Home Assistant. At the moment, HA has the ability to create binary on/off sensors when Sense discovered devices. These can be used as triggers for other stuff - like when to take the clothes out of the dryer.
If there are other Sense users out there running HA, I would love to collaborate with you and learn together.
What’s your favorite type of barbecue?
I dig the any kind of barbecue
Hello All. My name is Hal Clark and am excited on how Sense will work for me and my new solar panels that are installed but not turned on yet. Waiting on the inspection. I have installed my Sense monitor about a week ago and enjoying the results so far. I live in Milton, FL with plenty of sunshine so should be a neat way to keep up with energy produce vs energy used. Hoping to see plenty of credits for the cloudy days and nights. Have net-metering here. I am mostly retired except for a part time job as a security officer at our local hospital and I make fishing trotlines for catching catfish. ezcliptrotline.com. Looking forward to make friends on this forum.
Hal
Hello Sense Community! New user here - My Sense arrived for Christmas and has been installed for a little over a week now. Five devices discovered, three are known (coffee maker, microwave and well pump) and I’m trying to track down the other two.
I’m a glutton for geeky information. I’ve been steadily reducing power usage over the last few years - swapped all lights for LEDs, new heat-pump water heater, daughter went to college (biggest change), etc. I’ve been looking at getting solar and still feel like I use far too much electricity. We use about 1800-2000kwh per month for a small 1400 sqft home. All modern appliances, heating, cooling, etc., so Sense is my strategy to find more detail on what is using electricity and make further improvements & tweaks and then possibly adding solar to the house.
Just wanted to say “hi”. Love the information coming from Sense so far. Patience is tough as I want it to learn faster than it is, but I know it will take time.
Glad to be here!
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@MikeB,
Wow, that does seem a lot. We have a 1500 SQ ft house, 6 people and use about 600KwH per month in Winter (Gas heat, hot water and Dryer). We use up to 1200Kwh in summer (1800Kwh in July 2019. I think the A/C has issues), however, only for 2-3 months (A/C unit is old and needs to be replaced. Also house has little, if any, insulation).
The lights are 98% LEDs (only Stove, range hood, fridge and dryer haven’t been upgraded). Dishwasher is old and used daily.
Also, there is always someone home during the day (often 2-4 people).
FYI, I am in NYC.
Jon
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@MikeB. You might be asking the power company for a new meter after running your sense for a bit. Does your power company website offer usage graphs? You could compare their graphs to the sense usage. You don’t even need to wait for sense to detect everything.
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Hi, I’m Miles Fagerlie, a retired aerospace engineer living in a 4500 sq ft house in Peoria (part of the Phoenix metropolitan area).
I installed the Sense system myself about 3 weeks ago, and was impressed at how easy it was to install. The app is quite usable, and overall I’m pleased with the information provided by this system, although I don’t expect that it will wind up saving me money. I’m already running a pretty tight ship with a fair amount of home automation.
I have been watching curiously as Sense has identified various electric appliances. The most interesting are my wife’s hair curling iron (the first device identified about 3 days after installation) and our master bathroom lighting (4 LED bubs of 18 watts each - which is the most recently identified item).
At this point Sense has identified 17 devices, most of them heating elements on our electric stove (Stove 1 thru 6) and double ovens (Heat 2, 3 and 4). I think it’s presently lumping my upstairs furnace blower motor and my downstairs furnace blower motor as one device and I’ll be interested to see if it figures that out.
My “Always On” load is 421 watts. Can anyone tell me what is a typical home’s always on load? Is mine high, normal, or low?
Finally, I have a Honda Clarity PHEV, and I only use 115 volt (slow) charging. I can easily see the 1400 watt draw when it’s charging, but Sense hasn’t made any guess yet as to what it might be. I’ve seen on other discussions on this forum that a few EVs are (finally) being recognized as they get profiles established, and I’m hoping my Clarity is soon identified and labeled. It’s a non-trivial user of electric power, and one of my hopes was being able to set up an alarm to let me know if the wifi controlled outlet switch that powers on and off it fails or gets hung up, so my car won’t be allowed to charge during peak demand periods on weekday afternoons.
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Welcome aboard Miles… Your post is indeed intriguing, with (17) detected devices - within your initial 3-week period! I’m definitely interested in hearing more about your automated “tight ship”.
Welcome, Mike. This is an intro thread, so I’d suggest starting a new topic with your questions that require some more detailed discussion. That said, I’ll take a quick stab at two of your comments:
-Your always on seems a bit high but is in the right neighborhood for that size house. It’s really dependent on the devices you have. A 1000sf house with a pool pump could easily have a higher always-on load than a 5000sf house without one.
-Sense does not have any native detection models for level1 (120v) EVSE equipment, so I’d suggest that you replace your current wifi smartplug with a TP-Link HS110 plug, which will feed the usage data directly to Sense, and get that usage properly accounted for.
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I’ll post more as time passes. BTW, that Miles, not Mike.