I’ve noted along the way that some people report Sense “detecting” devices, but not mentioning that the reporting is faulty until later. Unfortunately, an incorrectly reported device is pretty useless, and not is properly detected at all. And, in some homes (like mine), faulty reporting it the rule. Not the exception.
My Sense unit quite accurately reports (although doesn’t seem to have calibrate capability, like some other monitors) the total consumption when compared to the revenue grade power company meter. It also quite accurately measures my solar, actually a bit better than overall consumption. Both of those use current clamps, not “detection”. Other devices vary considerably.
Be mindful that for at least some of us, Sense detects the devices accurately in the beginning, but they become faulty over time.
@samwooly1 Just bought the 900 watt Anova Precision Cooker. I’ll be amazed if Sense can figure this one out even slightly accurately… Its usage is all over the chart depending on the temperature.
Now that’s a wild waveform for sure.
I can see where there would be trouble seeing your other devices, detected or not, through this one.
It will be interesting to See how much trouble Sense has with its ability to pick up in native detected devices while its running.
Thank you for saving the time to post this exact same sentiment. Just substitute sauna for kiln. I even tried the smart plug to track the dehumidifier Sense couldn’t identify. Now it’s always on!
Sense, how about building in a minimum draw to be “on” for smart plugs?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean re: the smart plug. If the dehumidifier is attached to the smart plug and is being lumped into Always On, you should still see the dehumidifier usage broken out separately on the Always On page. Here’s mine (from the Web App):
Or are you suggesting that you feel it’s incorrectly being lumped in with Always On? That shouldn’t happen and I’m not really sure how it could.
This might be worth reading. It explains the concepts of Always On and Idle in some detail, as well as specifically how AO of a smart plug device is calculated.
I’m having the same problem and my smart plugs aren’t listed under my Always I n due to 1 watt fluctuations. This threshold is way too tight.
Let’s say I have a device running 5watts most of the time but goes to 6 occasionally, then it doesn’t get lumped into Always On.
Starting to get OT but the base calc for AO shouldn’t be doing that even for a 1w delta for a 2w actually-always-on device. Are you sure the 5w minimum is constant?
Recently I’ve seen that firmware updates threw off the AO listing because of the nightly reset treating the devices as “going to 0w”. Mine (on smartplugs) have all returned to “normal” now after 24hrs.
I talked with the platform team and the interaction between AO and smart plugs is as follows. The threshold for a device to be moved from AO is 15W, except in cases where the wattage change is sustained for 10 seconds.
So, in your case @samwooly1, it makes sense if that 6W is held for >= 10 seconds. Otherwise, that should not be happening and you should reach out to Support.
Very tired of the lane excuses why Dense Sense can’t identify major loads in my house.
I have two of the same model AC condensers and Sense calls one “Other”.
Just get the high energy loads correct and I would be happy.
Have two identical models really means nothing. They can be enough different to not be recognized.
They could have a different compressor in them, this happens a lot when the same model can use several compressors.
I had a detected water heater that was 2 weeks old and had to be replaced due to a factory defect.
I replaced with the identical water heater but had to wait for a new detection. There was enough difference to make the original detection worthless.
I’ve just been reading about otter.ai’s advances in speech recognition. Are we in the second or third decade of usable recognition? I haven’t found that the Sense folks offer excuses … they know it’s a very hard problem, especially for a relatively small group. Consider the relative funding for speech recognition!
I hear you … but I wonder how many more decades before any AI will be able to distinguish, say, 20 voices on a bad conference phone. Some of them perhaps from identical twins.
Noisy conference all is a great analogy, but skips the fact that Sense doesn’t look at “conversations” or even individual voices talking continuously. It only looks at start and stop transitions. So, for example, my always running computer center is in the “never detect” (continuously on) category.
It’s a very very difficult problem and that it works at all is pretty amazing. The biggest problem is that expectations set by their marketing are way beyond what their technologists can realistically deliver.
True, though I would push back a bit and say that it’s all a question of scale.
For any given start/stop there is a necessary period of pattern matching that is not exactly “instantaneous” … and no-doubt that period will be extended as the processing and ML matures. So within that period looking for distinguishing characteristics is the same problem on a shorter timeframe.
Like on the conference call a few people yell out “No!”.
Sense is definitely looking beyond the short transitions because they are detecting some EVs that have slow ramps as a single detection. It’s just that those detections have to be done outside the special, highly-tuned capabilities of the Sense monitor. I think long on and off transitions have to be sorted out back at the mothership using the Sense half second data.
From all the responses I’ve read from Sense, they were kind of surprised to see that (and electric cars are becoming a major market), so they have special cased such signatures. That’s one major reason that each car and even each charger requires a package specifically for it. Painful when trying to write generic software.
Since dozens (hundreds/thousands) of modern devices (like most modern refrigerators for example) also don’t do bang/bang on/off, that changes the whole ball game.
I would credit the Sense techs with understanding that an electrical device load can be bang/no bang/smooth/rough/ramped/all-over-the-place and that ultimately the on/off aspects to signatures is only a small part of what Sense needs to do and does do.
Part of the challenge is that until there is enough data the larger scale patterns are a bigger challenge.
And some identical twins are truly identical in every way, and others are not. The same motor and same fan may have the same part number, or spec, but may not actually behave the same the way that Sense sees them.
And on the flip side, if they were truly identical, how would sense know which was which? There are many (myself included) that have both air handlers identified as the same. Which ever turns on first gets tagged. Then if the second turns on while the first is running, it goes to other. Check out this blog post about AC units in particular. I know it doesn’t solve you problem, but I think it sheds some insight.
They may have the exact same numbers but will have different signatures when turning off/on.
You would be surprised how slightly different internals that would be considered normal anomalies will affect detection.
That’s why I was telling you about my identical water heaters. I have even lost detections because I changed a breaker in the panel. I changed it with the same amperage but different brand and lost everything detected on that circuit.
The windings in a motor like a compressor could have a few more wraps of copper in one and that would make them look different
