I have a Samsung refrigerator and it still hasnt been detected. Model# RF260BEAESG
Does anyone else have this refrigerator or similar model and has sense detected yours yet?
We have a Samsung RF28JBEDBSR. Sense has a refrigerator device which shows 81W average usage and runs ~20mins on average. Sense also detected the ice dispenser.
How long did it take before sense detected your refrigerator?
Surprisingly it was one of the first devices discovered six days after installing Sense. The ice dispenser took 7-8 months.
I’ve had my sense installed for just over a week now and it hasn’t sensed the refrigerator or its ice maker yet. It also hasn’t detected any of the ceiling fans in my house or either of the bathroom fans. I also have 3 APC UPS’s in my house and it hasn’t detected those either.
Sense is a serious test of patience. Next month will be a year installed and there are still some items it hasn’t figured out. It is still an impressive piece of wizardry in a box, we just tend get impatient and expect perfection in the short term.
1 Like
I doubt it will find the UPSes, at least for a long time. Chargers (that’s what the front end of a UPS is) are notoriously hard to detect. Ceiling and bathroom fans are more likely, though Sense hasn’t spotted any of our 4 bathroom fans yet. One possible challenge is that they all include CFL fixtures with built-in ballast, so they might have a different look than a standard motor.
You are VERY early on in the detection cycle, so patience is indeed key at this point. Sense is pretty awesome, but it does require patience.
And as @kevin1 mentioned, although UPS’s don’t necessarilly deter detection of devices behind them, the actual UPS itself isn’t likely to be detected. Secondly, devices that one would typically place behind a UPS (low wattage things like computer/networking hardware and such) are amongst the things that Sense often may struggle to, or possibly never locate. This is why many of us have opted to use the smartplug integration for those sorts of devices - I have a single HS110 that my main UPS is plugged into and it works well as an aggregate count of all devices plugged into it.
1 Like
I already had a feeling that sense either wouldn’t be able to detect anything that i have plugged into a UPS and/or wouldn’t even detect the UPS’s themselves which is why i already got a couple TP-link smart plugs and have sense detecting those instead. I am just concerned that the refrigerator is the most used item in the house and is always on but hasn’t been detected yet. I was surprised to see that while i was at the library with my wife and daughter that sense gave me three new alerts saying it discovered three new devices. it says its found another oven, heat 3 and has detected its first motor and named it motor 1. 3 new devices today and so happy with that so now i get to play Sherlock and figure out what they are exactly.
4 Likes
Don’t get too hung up on what sense initially detects as a heat or motor. More times than not it is correct but not always.
It’s oretty easy by eye to see the digoxin heat versus motor/compressor. With the latter, there will be an intial spike at the beginning of the waveform and heat generally resembles a rectangular block without the spike.
So, back on the topic of the fridge, I just looked and that model appears to use a linear/inverter compressor like many newer refrigerators.
Unfortunately due to the highly variable nature of how the compressors operate on refrigerators like this detection is often very difficult. Whereas Sense detected our old (early 2000’s) refrigerator with a standard compressor within a week or me becoming a Sense user, when re replaced it with a new LG linear compressor refrigerator I couldn’t get a detection.
I opted to simply spend the $15 to get a TP-Link HS110 and use that to allow Sense to see my fridge.
2 Likes
So sense told me it has detected a new device yesterday and named it motor 1 and when i look at it it said it came on at 12:34am and turned off at 12:40am and this was the only time it detected it but i went back and discovered it comes on exactly every three hours at 34 minutes after the hour and turns off at 40 minutes after the hour.
I got 3 of those HS110 last week and had one left that i hadn’t installed yet. I thought maybe i could use it somewhere else and was keeping my fingers crossed that sense would find the refrigerator but since it hasn’t i just went ahead and put the last plug on the refrigerator just now and added it to sense and filled out the info with the make and model under the settings so sense can start collecting the data from the refrigerator.
2 Likes
It looks to be a motor indeed - the spike at the beginning of the signature is very indicative of an electric motor starting up.
The cyclical nature may make it a little easier to figure out as it seems to indicate that it’s something on a timer.
I am thinking it may be the ice maker for the refrigerator but not 100% sure but now that i have it connected to the HS110 i should get some good data from the refrigerator and that might tell me if it was the refrigerator or that it might be something else in the house that i haven’t considered yet. I also have 2 HS300 power strips getting delivered today that i will be using in my wife’s craft room and at her desk and once sense supports these i will be able to add them to sense to get good readings for her Cricut maker, Cricut easy press, LG TV, apple TV, sewing machine and serger machine in the craft room and then her LG TV, laptop, printer, backup HDD and her battery charger for her vape.
Just out of curiosity but where exactly did you get TP-Link HS110’s for only $15? The cheapest I can find them is $30 a piece but you usually have to order them in packs of two for $60
An icemaker (one that’s part of a refrigerator, anyways) wouldn’t show that kind of signature - it doesn’t have a motor of it’s own that would show that kind of startup load, nor would it draw that many watts - a refrigerator/freezer compressor typically only draws about 75-150w when running.
This does seem like a larger motor like you’d see on a furnace (blower motor) or something like that.
As for the HS300, take note that they are not supported (at this point) by Sense.
HS110’s do go on sale quite frequently - there’s a thread here somewhere where people have posted links to them when they’ve found good online prices. I bought mine at B&W for example.
B&W Photo has them for $15.99 including shipping
I was looking at the HS300 myself, to capture my computer center, but didn’t realize it’s “not supported” by Sense. Thanks for the warning. Any idea if/when they will add this device?