Power meter device tags should remain

Product Wishlist
#1

The main power meter view you can see known devices tagged when they turn on and off in real time, but the labels disappear after only a few minutes. There should be a way to keep them around longer for reviewing past data on the main timeline. I find myself looking back a ways and am not sure what is causing certain spikes (I don’t stare at my Sense screen all day). Since Sense keeps track of every device’s past usage, the data exists and would be very easy to enable this. After all, the magic of Sense is that it has found these devices and can show you their usage, and the Power Meter view is the most interesting one to use.

Even keeping the device tags in the Power Meter for just 24hrs would be a huge benefit, a few minutes is simply not enough and makes looking back in the past on the power meter nearly useless.

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Allow Export at Resolution Smaller than One Hour
#2

Agree that that would be nice, but AFAIK the Power Meter tags persist for longer than a few minutes as long as you stay in the same Power Meter session, though they may not be appended when the app is in the background. Don’t know what the limit is, but I captured an hour’s worth here.

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And I can zoom in and see even more. All there and “recording” as long as I don’t leave the session.

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#3

Thanks for that info, most people don’t leave that screen open all day though. I’d like look back in the graph for what was happening at some point earlier in the day, when I most likely didn’t have the app running. If I open the app now and look at the power meter, the entire past is an unlabeled graph which is frankly completely useless.

Then I think to myself “what was happening with that spike there four hours ago?” but there are no labels…

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#4

Glad I read this. I do not get any labels in the power meter. Any hints on what I may have turned off? I think I used to see them

#5

There’s no on or off switch for the tags. They only appear in the iOS/Android app (not web app) and only after you have brought up the Power Meter and something has switched on or off with an “interesting” transition waveform. If you’re in the main Power Meter and not seeing any tags, try switching something relatively big (greater than 100W consumption) on or off. If you leave the power meter, the old tags are gone, only to have new ones show up when you reopen the Power Meter and have something interesting happen.

#6

This in my mind is either a bug, or terrible design decision which makes the Power Meter screen nearly useless.

Who is going to sit there with the screen open all day so the tags (which is the selling point for Sense mind you, knowing which devices turn on when) populate when you want to look back on your power usage.

I’m astounded this post hasn’t gained more traction or a response from the Sense team. The programming fix for this would be very simple as well, it’s low hanging fruit as far as app functionality goes. Maybe the Sense team leaves their phones on all day with the Power Meter open, but in the real world no one does this…

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#7

I guess a lot depends on what you are trying to do with the Power Meter. As far as I can tell, there is only a loose connection between the tags and detections. For me, many tags appear that aren’t connected with any detections yet, just transitions and associated power numbers. Plus many tags associated with detections (ones with device names) don’t display the correct power for the full transition. My perspective is that the tags are an underlying indicator of what’s going on in the monitor, but only intermediate data. I can’t really think of any way to use my tags in the context of the Power Meter.

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If you are looking for better ways to see detections in the context of the Power Meter, a bunch of folks have requested the ability to overlay detections here… Guess that would be cool extended to overlaying a detected device on the power meter.

#8

I would love to see spikes labeled more often.

Display on Power meter could be a device setting toggle like display on timeline.

Or power meter tags the biggest users and a vertical scroll browses events.

#9

Right now, the labeled transitions are a bit mysterious - I’m personally not sure there is value in making these tags more persistent, since they don’t mean that much.

  • Some do represent on and off transitions of detected devices - those you can essentially choose to see in the timeline and via alerts.
  • The rest are unidentified transitions of possible interest. Some aren’t even entire transitions - My EV charger causes 3 separate tags sometimes.
  • I’m pretty sure that these tags come from built-in capabilities inside the monitor (hardware and firmware) rather than the Sense software so it’s not an easy matter to present similar but slightly altered version (just the biggest ones, etc. as @cj.shiny suggests).
#10

I think the value of making tags persistent is the whole point of the Power Meter section of the app. Sure there are tags if you watch in real time, but does anyone use the Power Meter to scroll into the past?

Since no one leaves the Sense app running all day, the fact that the device tags only show when you have the Power Meter screen open leads me to believe they need to make the tags persistent at least 24hrs to make the Power Meter fully useful.

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#11

Agree on that. But what good is making them persistent if 95% don’t represent anything meaningful to us ? Unidentified and often incomplete transition tags don’t strike me as useful. Maybe your experience is different and most have actual device names on them ?

#12

I think you may be confused, the power tags I’m referring to are the known devices. All the spikes caused by unknown devices aren’t useful obviously, but if Sense knows what caused that spike I want to see it when I look at the Power Meter screen. Keep in mind the Power Meter is the most prominent button in the app menu, but if you click on it and want to see what happened 10 minutes ago, you will not see known devices tagged 10 minutes ago.

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#13

I understand your request now. But I was a bit confused because of terminology. My Power Meter, as you can see in the screenshots, is filled with unaffiliated device/transition tags interspersed with only a few associated tags. That despite having 25 or so native detections.

#14

Honestly I wouldnt mind both of these types of tags to be persistent, at least for 24hr for our review. The real meat of Sense in general though is to know what electronic device is doing what/when, so if I could at least see 24hr of known devices on the Power Meter, that would give it a lot more value than it has now. Since the data already exists, it should be a very easy change to make.

#15

I just want my timeline annotated on the graph… Whether it lines up with spikes or not it would help visualize the chronology more accurately

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#16

Gotcha ! So you you would have the option of showing the timeline events annotated on the Power Meter ‘backdrop’, not necessarily on the the actual waveforms…

#17

Hi Sense, can you make the device profiles plotted as an integration area when the device is running. I have an example of my refrigerator running and the integration profile. This would be completely amazing! And coding would be simple since you have the device profiles already.

#18

@derrickkress - I’m not sure I understand your request about “device profiles plotted as an integration area”. How might that be different than just looking at the device’s specific power meter display?

#19

It kind of sounds like my request in this thread, I’m assuming. It’s been pretty explained in depth but I still haven’t seen any response from the Sense team on this. It really would be a game changing update for the app, and would be very easy to do…

#20

Just installed my Sense on Monday so I’m learning the environment… now that devices are being identified I’m seeing tags in the power meter and that’s handy… what would be even more useful would be a color coded graph. If a device is “learned” and part of that is the consumption profile then when an activation is recognized sense should be able to fill in an “expected consumption” profile for the device in the chart… showing in a VERY easy to consume visual what devices are using power (and how much is “unidentified” still).

I think what I’m saying is similar to @derrickkress request… and unless I’m missing something in the device’s specific power meter display, that display is a very coarse bar chart even at it’s highest resolution setting. I couldn’t even use it to verify that “Furnace 1” is the hot water boiler in the basement for the main house and “Furnace 2” is the forced air furnace in the bar because it doesn’t show enough information (Using tags in the main power meter I could do the verification so I did find a way to do it… just not the way that would have seemed logical).

In fact I’m not really sure how to verify that many of the identified devices are the actual devices Sense thinks they are… actually signed in here to do a search to see if the community had figured out a process for this.