Old (deleted) appliance re-detected after deletion

Identifying Devices in Your Home
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To start for everyones info, I’ve had my Sense installed for about 3 weeks now. Device detection has actually been pretty decent inside that time period, but I’m planning a “my first month with Sense” post in another week or two on that topic.

Anyhow, A few weeks ago our old refrigerator went to the big kitchen in the sky because it was failing.

Ironically a few days after it was replaced by a new refrigerator, Sense detected the old fridge and added it to my devices list. I let the device listed on my dashboard for a week or so (just to be sure) despite the fact it didn’t take much sleuthing for me to realize that the device was indeed the old fridge - everything matched exactly including the usage right up until the very hour we unplugged it and hauled it out the door, with nothing showing since.

Knowing I didn’t need this device anymore, I deleted it 5 or 6 days back.

But late last night, I got another “Sense found a new device” email, and sure enough, it was the old fridge again. Once again, the usage pattern matched exactly right up until the very hour it was unplugged and hauled away, and zero usage since. That was October 15’th.

So, for the tech guys, a few questions:

1- Is it going to keep detecting it over and over again if I delete it again?

2- Is deleting it again potentially slowing down the detection of other devices, making the servers chew on data repeatedly?

3- Is this suggestive of the fact that the servers are still chewing on data from 2-4 weeks back in the device detection phase? If so that could explain why some of my other devices that are still MIA (my 2 EV’s, washer, dryer, for example) are still not there.

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A few random thoughts based on my experiences with machine learning:

  • More training data = better training ! The only data that you don’t want to keep around for analysis and learning is data that is known bad data (CT unlatched, etc.). I’m hoping that Sense looks back even further than 2-4 weeks back when the mothership is doing training updates, because the longer the history the better.
  • When you delete a device, you are not deleting the underlying data. You are just deleting meta-data.
  • I suspect that Sense retrains your probe when new device models that might be applicable to your home are introduced.
  • That would meant that a device that you had once deleted, would be re-detected during a re-training cycle.

Given that, I think there’s really not much of a reason to delete a device that was removed from your house. It probably doesn’t help Sense to remove devices that were once legitimate, and there’s probably no harm in keeping it around to help with historic data.

Would be interested in other opinions, especially from Sense.

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I will also add that I just replaced my stove, which had been fully detected. Turns out, my new stove is correctly reported as on when one particular burner is on. It is a triple burner, which my old stove did not have, and when I have that on in the dual burner configuration, it says my old stove is on. It doesn’t know it when I have it on low or are using all three of them. I don’t think it knows about any of the other burners or the oven yet, but I’m just going to keep the old device and if it finds any of the new stove components, probably will just merge them in.

PS - the new stove is a completely different make/model

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My 1 1/2 year experience with Sense, especially with the HVAC systems, is that it does an OK job with identification, but I really shouldn’t spend too much time trying to get everything named and merged exactly correctly. Changes and improvements in identification, plus conflation make perfect naming and merging impossible. Classic example for me is the moving and conflating components of my HVAC system - identification differs based on season.

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I rename old devices with a letter Z in the front …Z Old Fridge.
These devices go to the bottom of my device list.

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Yup, I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing.

Devices that have been replaced shouldn’t bother the currently active screens (although my refrigerator replaced more than a year ago sometimes shows up…Sense hasn’t found the new one yet), and this moves them to the bottom of the Devices list. I’ve also done this with some of the “detected” devices that rarely show up, but naming those starting with a “Y”. Maybe someday they will settle down

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No problems here. Sense detection has gotten a lot better over the last few months. When replacing my refrigerator I kept the old fridge as a device so I could look at historical information.

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Wish I was seeing that…after 20 months, it’s still found very few of my bigger power consumers, and none of the lighter loads.

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Andy, anyone that’s been here for a while is aware of the trouble you’ve had. You’re the negative Nancy of this forum.

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Sense re-detected some of my deleted devices over and over earlier in the year for me. I had a contractor doing some work in the house for a few weeks. Sense picked up 5-6 of their tools, which I deleted when their work was done. The tools were then re-detected for what seemed like months to come…

Support says they know about the issue and it’s on the road map to resolve.

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There’s either something wrong with your hardware, or your electric service is so noisy for some reason it’s causing detection issues…as I’ve been a Sense user for only 3 weeks or so now and I have 8 detected devices, most of which are detecting correctly and accurately.

Interesting, thanks. I did some work with a few power tools today as well (skillsaw, drill) but probably not for long enough for Sense to do much so far as detecting them, but I’ll be interested if they do pop up.

So, I think I’ll just do as others mentioned and add a “Z” preface to push the old fridge to the bottom of the list, at least until the re-detection bug is fixed. Not a biggie in the meantime I guess.

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Perhaps the “product’ (science experiment) is the problem? LOTS of folks are having issues, some of us worse than others.

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Hardware has been replaced, no change. My home is 100% electric, with 117 (or more) devices, including many networked devices…none of which have been detected. We’re both geothermal…heating and cooling…and solar. I bought Sense to monitor/manage my devices after seeing it on TOH, with the objective of becoming net zero. Pretty much zero success with that.

Sense engineering has identified one device that they say causes them problems, a constant pressure well pump from Franklin Electric. It has a very easily identified signature (at least for humans…ramps up and proportional to flow), but Sense’s algorithms don’t seem able to cope with such devices. Since that provides both domestic hot water and the geothermal heat pump flow, it runs quite a bit.

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If it’s spraying interference all over the place every time it runs it seems like you have basically identified your problem, and you have two choices:

1/ Replace the problematic device with another that doesn’t cause so much interference or disturbance on your electricity service as to disrupt the Sense.

or…

2/ Remove your sense and sell it to someone else who isn’t going to have the same issues.

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and @senseinaz: Guys, please keep this thread on track.

Per @pswired, this does sound like an example of that issue.

I’m going to talk to the DS team to get a bit more clarification, but I wanted to quickly chime in before I did that.

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Yup, and since the well pump does a fabulous job, giving up on Sense seems like the right solution

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Do it

@oshawapilot, I always found it fascinating, like, when spring came around, some of our winter space heaters were discovered weeks after they’ve been turned off. That was cool.

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