@herbertk1, I used an App to measure the WIFI strength near the Panel. I happen to have an AP that also gives me a reverse look at the connections it sees and the strength it sees the device at.
I have no information about your noisy house or panel question though.
All I have seen says that you should start to see devices in 24-48 hours.
Henry
Glad the deal enticed you and glad to have you aboard!
hello… I’m David… living in central CA, my wife and I live in our first home… just put up a new SunPower 6.12kW system just a month ago… got Sense and installed it today, so its learning what it needs to right now… but already we’ve been educated… our fake xmas tree with old incandescent bulbs is causing the wattage in the home to change by 200+ watts when they come on… WOW, I guess that tree my parents gave us last year is getting too old… we’ll be getting rid of that this year… get some nice LEDs like the 9 watt 150 bulb strings on the house… looking forward to the education we get from this device…
anyway, on another note, I’m a Residential Energy Consultant here in CA and I advise builders & homeowners on Title 24, the CA Energy Code… I’m a former Marine, semper fi to any devil dogs out there… father of 2 boys, a daughter, and a stepson… and we all take energy and saving money seriously…
Welcome, David!
That’s worse than I thought.
yes, I had never thought about it… after doing some testing, multi-on/off with/without tree topper, the topper (newer LED type) is <10W, but that tree with builtin lights and electrical was about 220-240W… crazy… I usually run the tree late in day, about 4-5hrs, for the month of dec… so running some quick numbers and comparing to last year’s bill, the tree accounted for 10% of our 2017 dec bill… 37-38kWh over the month… wow… an real eye-opener… I still can’t believe it…
but hey, that’s why sense is there… to teach me where I’m wasting energy, money, and time…
Mine averages 402W. Good thing it’s only on 5 hours a day. But still is projected to about 8% of my usage for the month of December. Looking at the actual cost though, it’ll be < $6 for the month of December, so spending $200-300 to replace it w/ a tree with LEDs would still be bad economics as I can run the tree for 34 years before spending $200 on electricity (at the current cost of course, so probably w/ rising costs would be about 20 years to “break even”) so I don’t really see a real need of replacing something that just runs for a month each year just because of the electricity cost for that month.
I do appreciate your view, but for me, its not about the “bad economics”…
for me, I have a 2016 built home that has a certain level of energy efficiency… I have a newly installed 6.12kW SunPower PV System, and the whole purpose to my purchase of a Sense Monitor was to make sure that my PV system will always cover 100% of my needs… I took 14mo of past bills, estimated my next 12mo of bills (with an increase in use), and sized my PV system at 85% output… that landed me in the neighborhood of about 10MWh of my estimated needs for the next year… my PV system is guaranteed no more than 1-2% loss year over year… so if I want continued coverage by my PV system, then I must continue to find and replace gross wastes of energy in my home… I’m merely stating that in the 1st 24hrs of operation, my Sense Monitor did its job and let me find my first needed upgrade to keep me on my path/goals…
for me, getting solar was about keeping my home within the limited income I have, and making sure I spend as little as possible on utilities… its about sustainability… I live in one of the poorest counties in one of the most expensive states in the country… I have no desire to move, I’m a disabled veteran, late 40s, with a moderate income (family of 6, <100k/yr combined), and I’m in the 2nd year of home ownership… never had a home before… and I refuse to loose this home to means that I do have control over… for my goals, the tree will be replaced…
on a lighter note, any tree is not likely to last 10-20yrs, so your “bad economics” is even worse… I’ve had the tree 2yrs, my parents 5-6yrs earlier, so its lived its usefulness…
A note - pick up the tree after Christmas sales - - they are reduced by as much as 90%.
lol, yes, my wife already has the handle on that one… thanks very much… we even have a local kmart and sears being closed down… so options should be good for savings…
Hello! I live in the Washington DC metro area working out of my house for a large IT company as a Sales Engineer. I started my career as an EE and love to build and dig into and repair all sorts of things. I do almost all of my own car maint, fix/build my own computer systems (and those of the family, yeah I’m that guy) and do my own investing (don’t trust those guys on WS), my own home remods and reapirs, etc. I purchased Sense to better understand my energy usage and have already come to realize my ‘always on’ is 2x that of national avg. I expected nothing less as I have two servers, lots of laptops, PCs, and 6 monitors that are generally always on. Will be interesting to grab some of the TP Links and monitor some of those devices. I am also interested in Sense for my lake house so I can monitor usage there as I rent it out for vacations, etc. Keep up the good works guys. Oh - BTW, I saw this device on This Old House, one of my favorite shows ever.
@mx4cc904 howdy from the opposite coast… glad to meet another of my kind… nerdy with a touch of mechanic… anyway, I’m not sure what you are using your server for, but my server is:
AMD APU A6-6400K on a m-ITX board
16GB RAM
250GB SSD system drive
8TB WD Red drive (files & DVR recordings)
1TB SSD (security camera recordings) drive
this system is only using about 50-80W, always on, running OpenMediaVault & Plex
my DVR tuner, HDHomeRun Prime only uses 5W, xfinity/comcast cablecard, always on
this setup runs really good… the HD Prime has 3 tuners, so I’ve been able to record 3 movies (my cable company broadcasts 720p), play 3 movies (streaming on local network to Rokus on each TV), and be recording my (2) FullHD 1080p security cameras all at the same time without issue on that single server…
my security/router is an Intel J1900 SBC with 4GB RAM & 16GB SSD, with (5) built in NICs, 10-15W, always on, running pfSense… with VPN to the office…
hope that gives you some ideas… my “always on” runs around 270-310W…
Nice setup. I have one server running HyperV hosting my AD/DNS and DHCP services, etc. Also doing WSUS on that server. I need to upgrade it from Server 2008. My other server is a converted Dell Workstation Precision T7500 with a single Xeon X650 proc with 24GB RAM, and 3 drives, two are 1TB drives and one is a 2TB drive. That server hosts my vSphere env for various mgmt tools I sell and hosting Citrix and VMware VDI images, etc. My most recent acquisition however is a Synology DS1800+ with 2 6TB WD Red drives and one 10 TB Seagate Wolf Drive. That is a very expensive but beautiful piece of equip. I also maxed out the SSD Flash and RAM on the Synology drive. I need to upgrade my router and security for sure. Curious, what app do you use to record movies? I use PlayOn for recording and Plex for playback as it supports DLNA much better but I am only using the free version of Plex right now.
I use the paid version of Plex… OpenMediaVault has Plex Server available in its repositories, but they have a windows-based server also… HDHomeRun Prime has a “paid” version of their software, but if you run Plex Server (paid) it supports the HDHomeRun devices as network-DVRs… so its seamless, Plex for record and playback… very efficient…
my security cams are FosCam Cameras, and OpenMediaVault supports FTP, so the cams save direct to the server over FTP… FosCam cameras save video in fullHD 1080p, no huge files… every 10mins creates a new 260MB file… time/date codes in file name… so easy to find any time frame you want… since I have a dedicated 1TB SSD for camera storage, I get 10 days of recordings, then a cron job deletes the 11th day recordings…
my Dad and I run a home-based business from his house, the other end of my VPN… his server is another AMD APU, 32GB RAM, 30TB of WD Red Drives, some data, some hot-swap backup… runs windows server 2016 and Plex server there as well… the two Plex servers are on the same account and we share videos and such… works very well…
intel processors are just energy hogs… we’ve been switching all our systems to AMD… a lot less wattage… my business CAD machine is a Ryzen 2700X octo-core with all the bells & whistles, driving (4) 1080 displays on a Radeon Pro 9100 video… my system idles at 200W and even hard tasks are nothing more than 300W… my Dads machine is a Ryzen Threadripper and those are just awesome…
Sense was born at our home in Oregon on December 23. She appears to be healthy and is currently calibrating.
I’m a technical manager at a very large semiconductor manufacturer working in the software / IoT / AI areas.
Looking forward to this journey and learning from the user base.
Welcome, Rick!
Tokind here. Network Ops Manager for a regional Credit Union in Southern NM. I also saw Sense on TOH. Sense Solar for Christmas this year. I was able to install it few days after Christmas. My background includes electronics and a wide range of physical plant skills (my dad was a handyman extraordinaire, and trained me in a LOT of skills).
Building codes vary widely across the country. We were fortunate enough to buy our home here in New Mexico before it had been fully finished. I was able to see a lot of the build, and watch as neighboring homes were built. I grew up in Iowa. I was shocked to see some of the lax building standards here. My home exhibits daisy-chained outlet wiring half way around the house. Over the years I have replaced all of the outlets in my home. Doing so was quite and interesting learning exercise. Those shove-it-in pinch connectors on wall outlets may be ok on a single or double terminal branch, but when you have 8 successive outlets daisy chained on a single branch, the amount of heating induced corrosion is alarming. Talk about electrical noise! All of those outlets are now wired with screw down terminals. Alas I cannot do much about the rest of the mess without tearing out wallboard.
I have an Enphase solar installation, 16 panels. That means that I have 16 240v inverters on my roof. This situation is so obviously noisey that I can see it in the graph on my Sense meter. I noticed the caution in me initial Sense setup that detection would pick up as the sun went down. This caused me to think, and that is good.
On line for about three weeks now, I have enjoyed seven device detections. I too am a bit frustrated that major appliances like washing machine and forced air furnace have not yet been detected. I ordered a couple of Philips Hue lightbulbs to see how these will help with detecting LED lighting.
The only non-LED light in my home is in the oven. I use IR-Sense switches throughout my home so lights come on as we walk around the house. They are trained for daylight, and masked so that they only come on when actually needed. I fashioned swing-covers for the bedroom and bathroom sensors so we can deactivate them at night. These prevent the lights coming on when we roll over in bed or get up to use the bathroom. Not all “smart” home functions require internet.
I am a very patient fellow. I am also willing to put some work into making this system crazy-useful as shown on TOH. That being said, I am not happy about not being able to help the process along by tagging what I know I have and/or what is happening (the heater blower just turned on) to help the process along. Yes, I know it’s complicated. But I can’t see how enumerating and identifying everything in my home by device + model number would interfere with or degrade the discovery process. Let me add the heater to my device list, and tag it as Undetected until detection succeeds.
-Peace!
Tokind
The name here is Nelson and I’m located in Mass. I’m a Senior Manufacturing Engineer specializing in automation and electro-mechanical systems. I also have multiple side gigs, including Halloween animatronic controllers and software as well as CNC woodworking. If there is a hobby out there that has a tech/modding aspect to it, I’m involved; RC vehicles and drones, 3D printing, VW enthusiast (love my MK7 GTI), home automation/security/surveillance and the list goes on. I added Sense to the mix about 2 months ago and absolutely love it. My Always On is down to about 170W and I’m happy to say I can pinpoint most of it (chargers, standby power, NAS). Sense has already helped to find and diagnose my Fridge that started to cycle it’s compressor way too often do to a bad temperature sensor.
Talk to you soon!
What brought you here? The associated link entitled “New Members/Old Members: Introduce yourself!” (literally), but I’m inspired to learn more from other members by contributing to improving the value of the 
product for myself and others.
How long have you been using Sense? I haven’t, I’m not directly tied to Sense. 
But my 
has been since Tuesday, 22 Jan 2019.
What do you do for work?
I’m an IT executive 
/ associate CIO for enterprise infrastructure and operations for a mid-sized federal agency. Data to decisions is a key foundation in my work, and now at home with .
What other smart home tech do you have?
Amazon Alexa (Spot, Echo Dot, Echo), Wemo Smart Plugs, Nest thermostat
What’s your favorite type of barbecue? Carolina 
, but I like to mix it up
Do you post on Reddit? No
Have a Twitter handle? yes, @davidharrity
Introduce yourself! Done!
Hello Everyone,
I’m Phil, and I’m a nonrecovering Sense-o-Holic. I started my journey back in December with a monitor on a 200-AMP fuse box and then later added two more to cover the entirety of my home’s power footprint.
I really enjoy geeking out on gadgets and so we have Hunter Douglas motorized blinds, a combo of LIFX and Noon Home lighting automation, Nest cameras, thermostats and fire alarms and Sonos for sound. Multiple echo dots help control everything, and I’ve renamed a few Alexas just to keep them all from overlapping too much. We also have a few WeMos around and I have found it challenge to keep a WeMo on Circuit/Monitor A from being a detected bubble on Circuit/Monitor B.
Across three Sense monitors, I have around 30 discovered devices and more popping up all the time. I have been keeping a log of what decisions Sense has helped me make…
• Replaced Chandelier lights with LIFX- reduced usage by 500W compared to 12 incandescents
• Shut off the Air Conditioning Breakers during the winter to save 20-30 Watts of Always On
• Found incandescent lights in downstairs bathroom
• Learned when our son's space heater was left on after he went to school (fixed with WeMo schedule)
• Learned how much the garage fluorescent lights use
• Learned how LITTLE the LIFX use (so we can leave them on without caring!)
• Get notified when the garage door opens
• Get notified when the dryer is done!
• Determined the upstairs subwoofer was consuming 20 watts
• Shut down wine cellar cooler to save 100 watts- (ours stays at ~65 degrees without the compressor running anyway)
• Shut down bar fridge unless we're having a party
• Shut down lounge power strip to save 20 watts of Always On
• Turned off the landscape lights 4 hours sooner to avoid 300 Watts of use when no one is awake to see them
Learned that we left the oven on and left the kids at home!
The biggest features I would like to see are the unification of 3 monitors into a single screen in the app, as well as detection for some of our more power-hungry devices such as the Jacuzzi J300 Spa heater, well circulation pumps and a few other devices. None of my LIFX or NoonHome lights have been discovered so LED detection would be great- especially since there are network events to correlate!
Well, anyway…thought I would share and if I had more time I would have written a shorter post, LOL.
Welcome. Love your setup. May have to find me a couple of cheap tablets now so I can have a Sense Display somewhere in addition to my Hubitat controller. (BTW if you’re into controlling things Hubitat is awesome)