My well itself is 65’ from the house, and then 470 feet deep. So the pump itself it a long way away.
The well controller (which is almost certainly making all the noise) is mounted on the same basement wall panel as the multiple breaker boxes (one with Sense in it), so perhaps 4’ away.
My only suggestion would be to move it away as far as possible from the panel/Sense, ground it with the thickest beefy copper wire you can find, the path to the ground must be as short as possible. The second option - you could try is the various EMI filters for VFDs. I’m considering EMI filter myself.
Andy, one question. Is your noise such that the Sense live power meter sees lots of “tagged” translation spikes or very few compared to my sample below ?
I’ve thought about a filter, but the rapid and continuous power variations are “real” (that’s how the controller manages the pump speed…and my constant water pressure), but Sense sees those as electrical noise. So I’m not at all sure a filter would help. And having spent a lot on this already, I’m more inclined to let Sense engineering figure out solutions than for me to invest in expensive experiments.
If you try it, let us all know what you got for results.
Continuous jagged whenever the pump is running for any reason (geothermal is one high volume user of the well, domestic use is the other, frequent and fairly variable), which is why it stumps Sense.
But when the pump is running and also not running, does each jag get a + or - Xw voltage tag ? It’s my thesis (unproved) that these are the transient events sent back to the Sense mothership for learning and eventually detections. I’m wondering if the monitor is overproducing events or underproducing due to the behavior of the pump.
Not sure what you are asking, or where to look for it.
@andy,
Go to your main Power Meter in the iOS/Android app, the view that I’m showing in the screenshot above. The view that smoothly updates with the whole house waveforms. As you can see in my screenshot, Sense appends “tags” that quantize power both up and down power transitions. In cases of known detections, it will also add the name of the associated device. I’m wondering whether the Sense monitor is tagging any/many of your transitions in the main Power Meter. A snapshot of a region where your pump is running would probably be most interesting - just don’t zoom out, or the tags go away. They only show up as they are generated via the live view.
I’ve had sense on my meter since March and it still doesn’t recognize either of my two HVAC systems
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Thought I’d update the thread. My Rheem hybrid water heater picked up over the last month and detection is flawless now!
My mini-split heater uses more than half my power in the winter and after two years is not recognized. I understand that the variable speed motor makes it difficult to recognize. I solved the problem with 120 volt appliances by getting a few smart plugs but that won’t work for the hard wired 240 volt minisplit. So I wish for the ability to add a couple CT detectors that could function the way the smart plugs do. That would solve most of the problems on this topic.
Unfortunately, the CT transformers need measurement circuitry to talk to, and Sense has only two of those…one for power mains and one for solar.
What’s really needed is a 240v “smart module”, which you can wire into the power circuit for your mini-split (and similarly for dozens of other devices with similar detection problems) and which would talk to Sense like the smart plugs do. Unfortunately, Sense continues to ignore this need.
What about my two garage door openers. Mine are battery backup craftsmans that are opened and closed multiple times a day.
Battery backup openers use DC motors so they are much more difficult to detect, at least today. Standard AC openers are typically detected though all 3 of mine (same model) all show up as the same detections.
Kevin1 is correct about DC motors. I have 2 Liftmaster 8500W’s and 1 8500. None have been picked up yet. However both my 8500W trigger an LED light at the same time, and a deadbolt actuator likely complicating detection.
Universal devices integration to call out 30+ light switches through Insteon. Currently all other smart home hubs integrate with it.
So the Insteon switches measure power and communicate it at roughly a once per second rate ? That’s what the supported smartplugs do. And the Sense Hue hub integration supplies calculated power data based on specific characteristics of each bulb.
So I’m not sure how the communication works exactly but there is a plm modem that finds the switches through the electric line (powerline) and they all communicate to the modem through the common wire. The universal devices ISY interprets and controls the communication between switches and tracks their state. So sense could I threaten with UD ISY and track states like the other smart switches Wemo and read the energy change when the switch is activated and the energy change again when it is turned off to estimate/track the energy used for that switch. This would allow for you to identify the energy per room and switch throughout the entire house. You would be able to track on and off, set notifications, and gather data on different lights.
I’m willing to do whatever treat or beta or software change you would need to get this going. I have an above normal smart house and nothing other than Wemo and hue is picked up (smart wise).
Thanks for your thoughts. First off, I think what you are saying is that the Insteon switches and system do NOT provide power information directly like the TP-Link, Wemo and Hue integrations today. But they should be able to infer that information by linking Sense transitions to events coming from the Insteon controller?
“read the energy change when the switch is activated and the energy change again when it is turned off”
My take is that that all makes sense, but is harder than it looks for 4 reasons:
Not trying to shoot down your suggestion - I really would like Sense to be able to intelligently read “features”, like on/off from home automation products for machine learning. But users have to understand that those home automation “features” aren’t as definitive as the actual power usage “ground truth” coming from devices like the currently supported smart plugs or the Hue hub.
I’m guessing that an integration with home automation systems would look closer to the current integration with Ecobee, where Sense uses the Ecobee history to improve data science and models for HVAC devices.
I understand your statements. How does hue work because I would think it would be similar. I’m just saying that I have had this since mid 2018 and I have around 100 light bulbs in my house and not one of them has been discovered. It to 1 year to find the vacuum. So sense tells me that I’m in the top always on, but never tells me what those items are. Also, I have a large other pull all the time. It’s time that something brew is added to read from devises when they are on and record the data. Also, there might be 1 instance in a month where two people turn two light in at a time to confuse the system. Something is better than nothing. I have a lot of appliances that I can see on, those things are foxed costs. No data on the rest of the house because it can’t fine it.
