I’ve had a Sense device for over 2 years. For the past 6-8 months I’ve pretty much ignored it as it started detecting many devices and orphaning others. I looked today and its clear over half of the devices that worked in past have been orphaned. Its “newly detected” multiple new devices to replace those and they orphan some of those as well… I have 6 “motors” and 6 “heaters” and other random stuff like 2 Water Heaters – which is funny since my single tank water heater is Gas, not electric.
Sense has continued to get worse over time, not better… and the data is totally useless.
Anyone else dealt with this and come out better … or is it time to ebay this thing and hope someone else has a better luck?
I had to do a factory reset on my Sense last April. Previous to that I had picked up 5 AC units and Sense would oscillate between which one was associated with my two AC compressors. I saved off all the data I wanted to keep around via Export, then did the reset.
My experience has been better since then. I still do have occasional new devices that I can’t account for (a few were from cleaning service folks who bring their own power washer of vacuum), and occasionally I do have a new device that shows up to supersede an old one. One thing I have done differently that helps - I do NOT merge device components because that causes the whole device to go AWOL if one component goes AWOL. I also don’t try to name / associate devices the day they show up - I wait a few weeks so I can get a good view of their history.
ps: I have a gas water heater but had an annoying Water Heater device show up regularly. I finally discovered that it corresponded with my “forgotten” in sink heater.
@kevin1, can you expand on this a bit more? My understanding was that the component uses were just summed up and reported as a virtual device. What’s the behavior you experienced?
You’re right - it’s just a virtual device and you can unmerge whenever you want. But it can cause confusion until you discover an underlying component gone AWOL. Suppose Sense discovers your furnace ignition fan and your main furnace blower as separate components, and you then merge them. A few months later the igniter fan gets conflated with a bathroom fan so your furnace igniter now shows up every time your bathroom fan goes on. Guess what ? You are going to see a Furnace bubble every time the bathroom fan goes on. Plus those erroneous Furnace detections trickle through into Trends and Export, at least until you unmerge. I can’t remember the behavior in Trends and Export after the unmerge, but I do seem to remember that remnants of the unmerged device stick around.