I’m an IT Director living in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve worked in high-tech, and financial services.
I installed my first Sense monitor last weekend, which went very smoothly. We have a large home with 3 main 200A panels, so I’ve only got one currently monitored. It has many appliances drawing power, including geothermal units, Lutron Homeworks Interactive, etc. I’ve recently added additional home automation (Alexa dots, Smartthings hub, z-wave switches,…).
We are trying to get a handle on our high electric bills and usage, and Sense seems like a step in the right direction. Ultimately I will need 3 monitors to cover our entire home, and am interested in having Sense aggregate those into a single account, so am waiting on that capability, before adding the additional monitors.
Welcome! Sense does need some time to start detecting your devices, given all the data it needs, so some patience is required up front. You’re totally right about the difficulty of the problem, but we have many users who are quite satisfied with the detection in their homes. While it’s not perfect (though I can’t think of an ML-based device that is…ahem, Siri/Alexa/Face ID who drive me insane continually), it’s getting better all the time.
@rick Welcome! While we don’t yet have multi-monitor support, we do have data export available via the Web App and you can manually aggregate from there.
I’ll join in here. My name’s Patrick and I live in Annapolis, MD. I’m an electrical engineer and work in the IT/datacenter industry. Like many, my foray into home automation began with X10 back when I was a kid. My current home control/monitoring interests include security, energy efficiency, fault monitoring, and remote access. I use SmartThings with a variety of different Zigbee and Z-wave devices for lighting automation, (rudimentary) security, and temperature/leak monitoring. I use Nest thermostats and smoke detectors tied in with SmartThings to automate various HVAC tasks such as fresh air control. Hikvision cameras and Ubiquiti network gear is in the mix as well.
As for Sense, I find myself using it mainly for remote monitoring of what’s going on at home. I’m away from home often, so it’s good to be able to check in to see that, for example, the refrigerator is still cycling and the well pump is not cycling. It’s also good to get some insight into which devices are energy hogs. I’ve had pretty much as-expected luck with device detection. Sense ID’d almost all of my basic resistive and inductive loads that are used on a regular basis, but nothing with a switching power supply, which is a bummer.
One of my most unusual and satisfying moments with Sense was being able to prove to a shoddy HVAC contractor that their technician did not pull a vacuum on my newly installed AC system. Combined with security video, it was clear from the Sense data that they never hooked their vacuum pump up, just purged the system to atmosphere and hit the road.
I got my Sense on the 2 days ago and installed it last night (on my own )
I was brought here to become part of something that I am very excited about potentially advancing and to learn about how much energy my Model 3 asks for when charging.
Lots of smart home tech including Chamberlain garage door opener, Nest thermostat/cameras, three Echo’s, many many Hue bulbs, Sonos. I am most likely missing something.
Barbeque? I prefer to use the smoker
I do have Twitter (@evanacree) but don’t use it too heavily. More of an Instagram guy (@evanacree & @Evs_EV).
I’ve been using Sense for almost 4 weeks now. Wanted to get it forever or make my own. Couldn’t justify the cost to buy it but now that we moved into our new house and I plan on getting solar, I have a reason to drop $300 on it.
3700 sf, 2 story house with two Goodman AC units. Big devices not detected so far are my Samsung RFG298 fridge/freezer, LG washer. and LG LDF6920ST dishwasher. All came with the house. There are exactly 100 bulb sockets in our house. These are permanent ones, not including desk/table/floor lamps. No lights have been detect since removing all the incandescents.
When the house is at rest we run between 400-500w. When it’s occupied in the evenings it can balloon up to around 1000w.
We pay around $0.12 for power in High Point, NC and they have a “buy all - sell all” system for solar. No net metering. So they will buy back at about $0.03
Came from Washington and so I’m actually very disappointed and amazed on how solar unfriendly this area is.
Thinking about going off Grid.
Welcome, Jason! 4 weeks is still pretty early in the Sense universe, so you should get more detections in the coming weeks and months, including (likely) so of those big consumers.
What brought you here?
This Old House!
How long have you been using Sense? April 2018
What do you do for work? Information Security at a Fortune 50 Company
What other smart home tech do you have? Leviton Decora switch and dimmers, Ring doorbell and chime, ChargePoint Home, soon to be some TP-Link outlets. I also have some old school home automation with motion sensing switches for my laundry room, garage, hallway off of the hall and pantry.
I also have a 10kw SunPower Solar array with SunPower Monitoring and a 2018 Honda Clarity PHEV.
What’s your favorite type of barbecue? I’m in Texas so it’s smoked no sauce here lol
My name is Brandon, and I have been a user of sense for about a year or so. I had installed solar and wanted better real-time monitoring, predictions, usage stats, and production stats, with the ability to share that information to other programs.
I am a heavy smart home user. SmartThings, Hue, Harmony Hub, HA, Alexa, Nest, Sense, RPi’s everywhere. Also an avid Home Theater user, and try to cross the border between smart home and home theater as much as possible, but I am just now getting into learning about API’s and the code.
I work as a Traffic Management Center Operator and 9-1-1 dispatcher.
As far as BBQ I vote Fire Department Chicken BBQ all the way.
Currently I have a RPi as a Plex server with a WinTV-dualHD tuner and an OTA antenna to create my own DVR with a 1 TB external drive. I also use an RPi as a dashboard in my kitchen. Running Magic Mirror and with an IR Blaster that controls its on and off through Harmony which is connected to either IFTTT or Nest location for when I leave the house it turns the Kitchen TV off. I also have another RPi as a Kodi Server, I dont use that anymore much though. I have a RPi running iSpy for my security cameras. I have another RPi as basically a computer with a wireless keyboard in my Home Theater Room so I have a regular internet browser and whatever else I would need, on a secondary screen.
I’ve been following Sense for a while and finally took the plunge at the recommendation of my PV installer. Panels are hitting the roof in December! I installed Sense yesterday and have the solar sensors ready to add when the time comes.
I’ve been using Home Assistant for a while and have seen some recent Sense-related activity. I’ll be setting up the integration after this holiday weekend.
What brought you here?
Ask This Old House Season 15 Episode 14 and my ongoing need to learn more and collect data How long have you been using Sense?
Just installed a couple days ago What do you do for work?
Network & Server Admin What other smart home tech do you have?
Nest, Hue, and some crappy off-brand smart power-strips – soon some TP-Link or Belkin outlets.
A rack of network and server equipment for “playing” What’s your favorite type of barbecue?
Electric smoker all the way, with some good barbeque sauce to go with. I recently started a keto diet, so I can’t have much of the “normal” barbecue sauce anymore. I can make a pretty good white bbq, though. Basically a lot of mayo, hot sauce, and seasoning.
Well I have been using Sense probably for about two and a half years, don’t recall exactly. I know I was frustrated by the limited info that was available so I started the Sense Users Group on Facebook back in October of 2016. I had a system with solar, but stopped being involved much back in May when I was selling my house in New Jersey. I just installed Sense a week ago in the house I moved into in Florida. Have to say the product has improved big time since my first go around, as it has already recognized a bunch of things and is much more stable. I am really liking the feature of using the TP-Link energy plugs to let Sense better track certain things. I have a bunch of computer equipment that uses from 60 to 400 watts, and with the TP-Link plug Sense can incorporate that usage. Come check our group out on Facebook if you have not already done so.
And yes, definitely check out the Sense Energy Users group on Facebook! It’s another great asset for the Sense Community. I pop in there enow and then as well.
Hi,
I hooked Sense up with solar 2 days ago. It seems to be running ok. No devices detected yet. Only the OTHER bubble is seen, and the SOLAR bubble during the day. I hope it can detect a few items in the next week or so. I have a few early questions I has hoping to learn.
How do I determine if my WIFI signal is strong for Sense? I have read that a strong WIFI signal is important to detection, but I am not sure how to check and see how strong the signal is according to sense.
How does one define a “noisy” house or panel? I have an old house with BX sheething cable grounds for many standard outlets. The panel is mixed with a lot of new BX or Romex with grounds. My panel is 200 Amp and 100% full of breakers. The amount of draw on each breaker is minimal however, and each may serve only 2-3 outlets or lights. The 220V items (Central AC, electric base board, hot water, dryer, stove, etc,) all have dedicated 220v breakers.
is it far to hope for at least one item detected within a week? Rather than seeing all draw being placed in the “other” bubble?
@herbertk1 Welcome. I would recommend starting a new thread with those questions. This thread is a personal intro topic. Your questions look like they’ll generate some discussion, which would be best in its own thread.
HI,
I saw this last year but did not buy at that time, then I lost the deal when it went to full price in January. I happened to see it with a discount on Black Friday and jumped to get it.
I have high hopes it can help me with identifying the high use items.
I’ve been in the Computer Performance Analysis field for 30+ years. Long before it was called Performance Analysis. One of the hard parts is getting the raw data of the interactions between systems and applications.
I see this device filling that gap for energy usage. We have the typical freezer in the garage and an older fridge there as well. I’m hoping this will help me know if they are running OK.
)
s around.