I’ve had my sense in for a number of months, now (coming up on a year) and have yet to identify a single light. I have a mixture of incandescent and LED and about 1/3 of them are behind controllable insteon dimmers, but not a single one seems to have been discovered. Also, none of them appear to trigger the “on/off” alerts of devices that have been found but are “unidentified”.
Any thoughts? Do others have their lights identified automatically?
Dan
I have a pair of CFL tubes in the laundry room that have been detected with about 80% reliability (they’re on a motion sensor). I have a second pair in the garage which are used infrequently which have not been found.
I think leds and lights on dimmers are going to be incredibly difficult to detect.
I get the LED thing, but the dimmers are set to certain levels and come on at VERY specific times basically every day. Perhaps the fact that they’re basically transformers prevents any kind of fingerprinting, but the overall load itself would seem to be predictable…
FWIW, the dimmers in use are these:
Dan
My dimmers are all over the place 
(ge and go control zwave)
I’ve had one set of four LED ceiling lights identified in my study. These are BR30 type can light bulbs that use about 9W each. I’ve also had one set of fluorescent tube lights detected on my mezzanine. They are a set of four 4’ T5HO tubes. I have an almost identical set of four 4’ T5HO’s plus 2 2’ ones in my bedroom that get turned on and off a whole lot more than the mezzanine lights but they haven’t been found. It’s a bit funny that I’ve also had my Sense for almost a year and of the 8 items it’s found, the only two that aren’t just pieces of appliances, or random noise triggered by multiple devices, are lights.
Not one identified light, even large consuming incandescent floodlights, after a year
Nope. Not a one. To be fair, I don’t HAVE any large incandescent spotlights, at least not that actually get used. mostly 60w and equivalent LEDs in most of the house.
I’ve had a lot of lights detected. In the bathroom, there are two 4 light fixtures controlled by the same switch which have LED bulbs and have been detected. I also have 2 fixtures in the laundry room that are fluorescent that are reliably detected, in addition to outside floodlights. I have two sets of those (one set has LED, one does not), both reliably detected.
The one interesting thing is that a different bathroom has one 4-5 light fixture, and it was detected with LED bulbs. However, we changed the bulbs out for different LED bulbs, and now it doesn’t detect that one anymore.
I imagine lights are going to be hard, because the signature will depend on the driver circuit or specific attributes of the bulb, and bulbs get changed - and similar or identical bulbs are used in many fixtures around the house. I do wonder if it would be possible - based on electronic signatures - to estimate the total wattage of LEDs or CFLs in use at any one time? If so, that might be a better way to go about it than individual device detection.
I have 95% LED bulbs throughout the house… Sense hasn’t found a single one yet, but has found many other things from ovens to dryers to EVs to vacuum cleaners. No lights though, LED or incandescent.
Sense has detected four “lights” in my house.
The first is a set of 6 x 100W halogen bulbs that are in my master bathroom. They’re on a dimmer with the high limit at 90%, and Sense picks them up as 575W. If I turn them down, they’re moved to Unknown for obvious reasons.
The second is a set of 4 x 8W LED bulbs in the bathroom with cat litter boxes. They’re either on or off (no dimmer), and Sense picks them up as 33W.
The third and fourth were 30W incandescent appliance bulbs in my old kitchen fridge and microwave. But I replaced both appliances and Sense hasn’t up the bulbs that are in the new ones - I think they’re LED based on color temperature.
Anyway, here are the two that are picked up:
I had to reset with the addition of the solar/change of the main panel. Before then, the only light it detected was an “appliance” light (in the microwave), which may be the only incandescent bulb left in the house. Annoyingly, it never “grouped” it with the microwave. I have MANY lights controlled by WiFi switches that are on the same WiFi network as the Sense, and have been surprised that Sense hasn’t discovered them even though Network Identification is Enabled. It also hasn’t detected any of my fans. I wish there was a way to itemize out all of the electric components in the house so that Sense could try to match some of them… I am not talking about explicit training, but creating a database of sorts… what devices do I have, are they hardwired, are they on switches, if on switches, are they on a common switch with another device, etc. Of course, much of the time my house is sitting at/around 200W and that is with a cable-modem, 3-wifi access points, 2 POE routers, and a number of other “always on” devices… and I suspect it will never “learn” those without some help.
When I got Sense, I didn’t expect much in the way of light bulb detection. The loads are relatively small, there are so many similar lights in the house, I figured it would be difficult to set one apart from another.
So far, just under a month in, and Sense just detected two light switches in my house. One is the Master Bathroom lights, combination of LEDs and Incandescent decorative fixtures, totaling about 120 Watts. The other is the basement lights, mixture of LEDs and CFLs, about 120 Watts as well. So far Sense has not detected any of the lights I have on dimmers, even those that I don’t adjust regularly.
Sense quickly identified two 100w Philips floodlight bulbs in our back yard. 17 days live and 10 things correctly identified with 3 others for me to figure out. I did notice it pick up the toaster usage as the coffee maker. Does anyone know if once the two are seen correctly separately, will their historical data be correctly allocated to each of them?
Heating items seem to be the most confusing for Sense. We have a waffle maker, toaster, vegetable steamer, and skillet that for a while were detected very well, then got worse, and now I just don’t pay as much attention to.
I mean, really, other than not using them entirely based on how much energy they’re using (which I can see in the real time graph anyway), what sort of behavioral modifications am I going to make by knowing how much energy my toaster or coffee maker makes? Think I’m gonna quit making waffles on Saturdays, or think I’ll be able to convince my wife to stop drinking coffee in the morning? It don’t mean a tinker’s damn.
What’s been really helpful is knowing how much energy we make, and how much we use, when and why.
While I agree re the waffle maker, we have been turning our Keurig off during day when not making coffee anyway (and, no, Sense didn’t help with that…it still has found virtually none of our kitchen, including cook top, ovens, refrigerator, etc after a full year).
Personally I’d like to see it pick up the big consumers reliably, things like our deep well, clothes dryer, ovens, dishwasher…which included hot water booster, etc.
Personally - I think Sense should be working to figure out why things go relatively well for some consumers but can be so disappointing for others.
What is it about your home, or @andrew 's home, or others that are having such a hard time? Is it age of the wiring? Complexity of devices running with some frequency? Models of appliances recognized?
Our range top and oven is recognized fairly well (GE brand), our refrigerator (Samsung), our heat pump (Trane), our dishwasher (GE), and our water heater (Rheem). Do other people have weird brands that don’t behave the same way others do? Do they simply have so many things running it’s like Sense is trying to sort through a lot of static just to try to do what it does? Is there something about the age of the home and quality of the wiring - do all of you have a neutral line throughout the whole home?
I think the device detection is pretty good, but Sense needs to figure out what situations make it not so good.
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