I have one of those smart power strips in my office. Desktop is plugged into the sensing outlet with 2 monitors, laser printer and a couple other things on the switched outlets so when the computer goes to sleep everything else turns off.
I’m wondering if I should leave it like this.
Will Sense detect everything as one device or individual devices?
Would it be better not to use it before anything has been identified?
At some point I may swap out one of the devices plugged into it or components in the PC itself and would hate to have to go through the identify period all over again if it detects everything as one device or screw with the individual detection having everything turn on and off at mostly the same time.
The only one of these types of desktop devices (computer, printer, router, monitor, network drives) that Sense has been able to natively detect for me, is the laser printer, because of the heating element. Most electronics have power supplies that “hide” the kind of immediate on and off signatures that Sense looks for. So I think you will have another detection issues in addition to the smart power strip. I have plugged the power trips for our 3 “workstation” areas in our house into HS110s (today I would use KP115s) to get the best accounting for desktop devices.
I’d also given up on Sense finding much of anything in my office, and am using a powerstrip plugged into an HS110. That’s very accurate (does combine the dozen devices in my office) and is rarely more than a watt or two different than my calibrated Kill-a-Watt. The total office is under 100 watts, except when either of the laser printers are running. At my 18 cents per KWH, that means the office is costing me a little over 40 cents per day, tiny compared to the big consumers (all 240v) that Sense also hasn’t been able to detect and for which there isn’t an HS110 equivalent solution.
Sure wish Sense (or a suitable partner) would address the 240v line detection issue, perhaps with a TP-Link like connection to Sense.
Hey @andy,
Finished my experiment using a second Sense for 2 x 240V monitoring. I’m guessing I could monitor a third unbalanced 240V circuit if I got tricky.
Wasn’t expecting Sense to detect everything, but in case it did. Not going to spend a (seemingly) fortune on a Kasa to monitor it as when things need to be on they are on. No real way to save too much power there. I don’t see it paying for itself.
Sense did detect a “coffee maker” over a week ago, I knew it wasn’t a coffee maker as Sense had already detected my actual coffee maker. Community names said 100% coffee maker.
I just had to print out a few pages and Coffee Maker (guess) came on and off a few times. Turns out it was the printer. It went “off” between each sheet.
It’s a Brother-L2700DW
Well now I can understand why Sense thinks my printer was a coffee maker. We also have a Keurig B70 that we keep on a smart outlet as it only gets used 1-2x per week and I know they eat a lot on standby.
This is the Keurig this morning, thinking it was the printer.
If you can’t already, you’ll soon be able to see the similarities in waveforms between heating elements (Keurig and the printer) and motors.
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