I have put smart plugs on several partially detected devices in my house. I have them on my two furnaces for a few reasons:
- Sense was quite good at detecting the air handler but missed several other components of the furnace operation (igniter, gas blower) and didn’t seem likely to ever find those.
- I also wanted a rock solid detection of the air handlers that I could use for doing correlation studies against AC detection in the summer.
Sense vs. Ecobee: Round II - #13 by kevin1 - I was also interested in the Always On component stemming from the logic boards and thermostats attached to the furnace. The smartplug interface was able to peg the Always On usage for both furnaces at 7W, which helped reduce my aggregate Always On number.
I can’t see any downsides except:
- Using smartplugs on a detected device eats into your limit of 20 smart outlets total (current limit for Sense monitor)
- You have to remember to attach the detected smartplug device (i.e. the dishwasher component found by native detection ) to the smartplug device to avoid double counting.