Use of Smart Plug WITHOUT Energy Monitoring

[kevin1]

3 thoughts on why simple, non-power-monitoring smartplugs might not be desirable:

1. Can’t augment Sense output - simple on/off reporting doesn’t supply enough data to create a full “device” in the Sense GUI. On/off data can’t be used for device bubbles, trends, and power meter.

2. Training - I would guess that simple on/off ground truth data is far less useful for training Sense as well.

3. Cost- polling smartplugs and managing the response data once every 2 seconds costs network and Sense monitor resources. This shows up in Sense’s limit of 20 smartplugs. Why use an expensive resource (polling) when the data isn’t so helpful.

There is a cheaper way - the Hue integration and another user-built home automation, SenseLink, can convert on/off and dimmer data into “calculated power” data and share with Sense. Those slot nicely as standard Sense devices. More on SenseLink here:

Emulated Kasa integration Brings SenseLink to HomeAssistant

Hi @jefflayman! I think between myself and @enbickar, we can provide some details! As an initial explanation, the TP-Link Sense integration works as follows: your Sense monitor sends out a UDP broadcast requesting power data from all plugs on it’s subnet. All TP-Link plugs (real or emulated) then respond back with their power usage, which Sense uses to display the plug bubbles. So no cloud computing here, it’s all local - and no accounts required. You won’t need accounts with Github or Home As…