Have you ensured it’s updated to the latest firmware?
I was having some major issues with the same HS110 I was referring to above and it turned out to be that it wasn’t on the latest firmware despite me thinking it was - when I updated it all the issues went away.
No, I haven’t. Thanks @oshawapilot as I didn’t even know firmware updates were even possible.
I’m going to find out how and take care of it right away. I’ve been bummed because one of the most important things I want to monitor hasn’t been going as well as I have hoped. Too difficult for sense to pickup I think. It’s just a .52
Amp pump
The option to upgrade the firmware can be found in the Kasa app.
Pretty much every piece of Kasa hardware I’ve bought (including my HS110’s) were multiple versions of firmware outdated.
I tried but it say no updates available. I ha e the hs110 v2 with firmware 1.5.4
I’m getting good connectivity 60+ feet (and one floor) away.
Me too. I think HS110’s sat on shelves for a LONG time (perhaps explains the serious discounting now available too), so the firmware they were manufactured with is WAY out of date. That said, I saw no differences in behavior after updating.
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with HS110s scattered all over my house, but I think all of them are v1’s.
I’ve tried deleting the device and starting over a few times but that hasn’t helped. What’s strange about deleting and resetting the plugs is when you go to set it up again, whatever name you had for it is remembered and defaults to the last name given. Should it do that? Doesn’t sound like it was completely reset.
@kevin1 That is a quite impressive number of detected devices you have there. You mentioned 3 smart plugs, but are there others that you’ve used to hint here? I have many of those same devices and they haven’t been detected in the months that I’ve been up and running (Sonos, Apple TV, etc – I’d imagine all have a pretty similar footprint).
I’m using about 20 smartplugs right now. Fairly certain that Sense won’t find Sonoses, AppleTVs, TiVo’s (all forms), for a long time to come. When they are idle, they show an essentially constant power and when running, their consumption depends on what they are recording/playing.
Makes sense. I just ordered 3 more pairs of smartplugs. I gotta get to the bottom of this 660W Always On, and 300-400W Other.
Speaking of TP-Link HS110’s… the one powering my office desk is driving me BONKERS. It is detected as ON/OFF all day/night long. Since they integrate with the devices, I’m weirded out that it doesn’t just detect it as IDLE when things on my desk go idle together.
Just disable the notifications.
“Idle” state is a learned state that can take some time to settle out. It’s also not very useful in an application where the consumed wattage can vary a lot as well, as you seem to be experiencing. An external hard drive that spins up every hour for an automated backup (for example) is enough to kick an HS110 via Sense out of “idle” state and accordingly, trigger On/Off alerts.
The only time this does ON/OFF is when it’s truly idle at 26W. Otherwise it’s always above 100W. It’s pretty obvious that it’s idle. There’s NO fluctuation from the 26W for hours on end.
But here’s the important point. It’s never in an OFF state. Why would it detect it to be off? It’s a bug.
And it’s not like they need to monitor the power line feed for patterns… it’s an integrated HS110 that it pings to get information about usage and state. It’s not reporting OFF in Kasa, so why in the world would it think it’s off?
Yes, these “On” and “Off” states do refer to “Idle” and “Not idle” really, I agree it’s a bit of a misnomer, but I think we all understand the point behind the wording.
As for the notifications, even a 1w bump over and above what Sense considers idle could be enough to trigger loss of the idle state, and therefore, trigger an “On” alert as well as corresponding “Off” alert when it drops back into idle again.
I had my home server (which serves a few small websites plus my personal photo hosting, etc) hooked up to one of my HS110’s for a period of time - when all the sites were idle the HS110 would drop into idle, but even a single page hit on any of the sites was enough to increase CPU usage enough to draw an extra few watts and kick the HS110 out of “Idle” state in Sense, if even only for a second.
That’s what happens when you add a new state, “Idle”, for one specific situation (smartplugs), into a complex UI system, without plumbing the whole system for the new state.
I personally like the introduction of “Idle” (sort of an Always On for an individual device/Smartplug) because it does give more info about device behavior.
Clearly we need the ability to override what it thinks is a change in IDLE state then, because otherwise, what’s the point? Seriously, it sits idle and stays at the same wattage, according to the UI, but yet it’s coming in and out of IDLE state. Totally worthless feature if you can’t throttle it to be usable.
For example, if we could do “20W change will not trip IDLE for this device” I would think that is reasonable. But right now, to be at 150-200W all day, then 26W in idle, but then 26.5W trips idle state, that’s pretty silly.
Yes, I’ll disable the notifications. But this really defeats the purpose of notifications altogether if my devices using a fraction of a watt difference – even with a partner device that is reporting accurate states about the consumption in near realtime it can’t seemingly accurately do this.
What a shame!
Of course, I have no other choice to make, since it seems that’s just what we have to do.
IDK - I think there might be something wrong with the implementation of the algorithm. I would check in with support. Original Idle didn’t show unless it saw On peaks at 150% or 200% of Idle. I couldn’t get my Sonos to detect Idle vs On, even if I cranked the music. Think they can use continued feedback on when it is working and not.