So first of all, as a new Sense user and relatively new to the community I’ve drawn some early opinions about bubbles
1 - I hate the bubbles
2 - I really hate the other bubble
I know I’m probably making the Sense UI team hate me but the choice to make the “other” bubble grey in color is like a form of gamification to a geek. It’s a combination of frustration and motivation to outplay the dreaded grey bubble. That “other” bubble represents the unknown in a house you thought you knew. The community forum lights up with discovery questions because everyone wants Sense to find those mystery devices and make that grey bubble vanish!
Today, thanks to plugs, discovery of 2 devices (yay I can say 2 now), a lot of manual entry in the always on devices, and the ability to use HA for Kasa Emulation I’ve rid my Sense of the grey bubble (until my EV charges, but we’ll pretend like that doesn’t happen since I’m asleep)!
Tood… Wait till you get a 220 device that has one bubble with half the load on the bubble you expect and the other half in the ‘other’ bubble… Enjoy it while you can… My 2 cents…Later…Gerry
I’ve personally got my dryer on an Aeotec Heavy Duty Smart Switch. Aeotec also makes whole home energy monitors that are just CT clamps. I don’t have it, but I’ve considered getting one to put on my AC line in the breaker. My water heater and stove/oven have actually been natively detected by Sense pretty well.
I use the GE one. I had to take an unfortunate trip to the ER with my grandmother tonight so I’m unsure of the model number but here’s a picture of it that I have in my phone.
I’m not sure that tech support is correct in that. I think a little common “sense” would go a long way.
Let’s assume you have 500w active and all of the devices using power are on Kasa plugs. That would mean that Sense would see 100% of the usage associated with devices. What would be left? Answer = nothing
If you read the two paragraphs above it said that the other bubble is comprised of unknown devices, therefore if they’re known through Kasa then they shouldn’t be included in the unknown.
Seems to me like there’s a miscommunication or misunderstanding with tech support
@Beachcomber I see the screenshot. I know what they said. But Nick, in my humble opinion, is wrong. From first hand experience I was able to remove my “other bubble” completely by assigning those loads to Kasa plugs.
Maybe @RyanAtSense could clarify this and explain why support would claim otherwise.
Thanks for flagging to me. It looks like there was some miscommunication.
Detected devices — whether devices detected via machine learning, smart plugs, or dedicated circuit sensors — are subtracted from the Other bubble. Note that this does not apply to user-added Always On devices.
More specifically, Other wattage is equal to your total wattage minus active bubbles (including Always On)
No and Yes. No, because the power in Always On bubble is not included any of the native detection bubbles (native detections don’t include any Always On power) Yes, because the Always On bubble does include the Always On components of each smart plug.
And to add to that a little. Those devices that Kevin is referring to show you what portion of their power is always on. So even though it’s included you can visually see that it’s included because it tells you. Like this:
HA = Home Assistant, an open-source home automation platform. It has an integration with Sense that can sample Sense usage and device data, and uses that data to run automations. There’s also a Sense user created module that reads power data coming from sources that Sense doesn’t yet integrate to, then emulates a Kasa smart plug to send that data to your Sense monitor. So your additional power source(s) look like smart-plugs. This thread gives more info.
