I spent time watching our washing machine handle a moderate load of clothing. The sequence is essentially: spin . . .fill . . .spin . . .fill . . .agitate . . . spin . . .agitate . . . spin/drain . . . .fill . . .spin . . .fill . . . spin . . . agitate . . . spin . . . agitate . . . .spin/drain. I think I know where all these unidentified motors came from. So I inserted a KASA smart plug to watch the washing machine. As you can see below the readings are fairly complex. I would be surprised if “Sense” could be drawn from this data.
I’ve had the washing machine on a smart plug for a while now… I use it to determine when the load is finished. It notifies me when the washing machine has been in standby for 2m…
The usage pattern is a mess… which like you mentioned, is probably why sense can’t detect it…
I have two washing machines: an old, reliable one and a new one that saves water, electricity and detergent but is so complex that any component failure renders the whole thing useless, which is why I am back to using the old one. The repairman said that to get the new one working again would require replacing its motherboard. Anyway, the point of this post is to compare the two from a Sense standpoint, not their durability.
Sense identified three components of the old one. I named them Washer, Spin and Agitator. These captured about 75% of the consumption, based on measurements with a traveling smart plug. They were pretty reliable, so I set a notification when Washer had been off for 20 minutes, and moved my smart plug.
In search of better efficiency, I got a horizontal axis washing machine. I put it on a permanent smart plug, since its usage pattern was very complex. Indeed, Sense did not identify any its usage. After it stopped working, I am back to using my old clothes washer. I kept the smart plug at the washer since it was there anyway.
The native device definitions in my old washer have drifted over time. They now record more usage than what actually occurs. The chart below records the ratio of native to smart plug. I also see a similar drift on some of my other native devices, which I attribute to some defect in the machine learning algorithm.
I did the same thing except mine takes longer to fill so I have an alert set to send me a notification when “the washing machine has been off for 7 minutes”, then I know to switch the laundry.
