I found new problem while building my smart home. I got multiple lights that has been already detected and recognized and it works fine when switched on/off independently.
Problem starts here: “Alexa! Party mode!” OR “Alexa! Total Black Out!” - And, of course, Sense looses track of each individual light circuit which is understandable. Is there a chance that Sense will figure out what each scene is composed of or it will continue see it as unidentified bulk load and later come with new light detection? Right now, I’m thinking about how to configure each scene so that lights doesn’t come on all together and to use timed delay relays where possible.
No, just regular incandescent 100w pool lighting, and LED landscape lighting behind 12VAC transformer. Sense definitely earned a respect here for detecting low voltage LED behind AC transformer, and even naming it Light by default, pretty quick. Of course now with all those scenes it got confused and doesn’t sense it anymore.
Ah, I see. I read “scenes” and immediately jumped to Hue. So, how are they integrated with Alexa then? It doesn’t sound like the simultaneous device should confuse Sense too much.
I have implemented Z-Wave mesh network at my place, it consists of z-wave light switches and relays, it all connects to Qolsys IQ 2 home automation panel via 413Mhz z-wave protocol and routed trough alarm.com which has Alexa integration.
Here’s an isolated case that I managed to rework so that Sense is not confused anymore. I have landscape 12VAC lights controller that was driving plain electric relays to trigger pool lights, waterfalls which are not 12VAC but 120VAC and not directly associated with landscape lights. As I said, Sense didn’t liked it and stopped monitoring all together - landscape lights gone, pool lights gone, waterfalls gone. Combined load went to Other section. Whenever landscape controller switches on at same time pool lights and waterfalls comes on. I swapped plain relays with timed delay relays which puts 5 sec lag each time relay coil is energized/deenergized. So now landscape lights come on > 5 sec delay > pool lights come on > 5 sec delay > waterfalls come on. Sense is now happy to monitor those separately. Timed delay relays helped to solve this particular landacape problem.
If you’re ok utilizing time delays, that sounds like a good solution. But I am surprised that Sense is being thrown off here. LEDs can be tough to track given their low wattage and odd signature, so I’m surprised your detections have mostly been ok for the LEDs. I would suggest writing into Support about this as they can look into your data and give you a better explanation of what might be happening.
My LED lights are behind 12VAC 60hz transformer and it pulls around 400W in total. All Sense can see is 10x stepdown transformer but it managed to offer “Lights” detection somehow. Presumably, AC transformer is somewhat transparent to Sense since it came with the Lights idea.
I believe it is acceptable for Sense not being able to figure out components of larger array and instead goes for combined load on the same circuit switching On/Off simultaniously. The very same reason behind why Sense won’t isolate bathroom overhead lights 100W bulb each and name it 100W Lights 1, 100W Lights 2, 3, 4. Instead it will come with Lights 1 with 400W consumption.