In the spirit of home awareness, we thought we’d help put your device’s energy consumption in context! Now when you go to the Device Details view for common devices like microwaves, refrigerators, and coffee makers, you’ll see information about what a typical device consumes. For example, the average toaster uses 1200 W. Are your devices above average?
More updates are on the way soon, so stay tuned!
Note: Monitor Firmware Update
We will also be releasing a monitor firmware update on Thursday 4/27 at 2 am UTC (10 pm EDT). This firmware update will make some minor improvements to our Network Device Identification and will move future firmware updates to 7am UTC (3 am EDT).
With all due respect. Adding features are worthless when the Sense cannot figure out what is what in my home.
Did Sense hire ex Microsoft software engineers. Their system has always been buggy and they just keep adding features when basic componentes do not work.
I’m sorry you’re having device detection issues. The team is hard at work on device detection improvements! If you’re having a specific problem, I recommend reaching out to our support team: https://help.sense.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.
I view Sense as a unique new product (or, well, a unique application of existing technology to an entirely new field). It has little relation to other products other than it is heavily software based, and it is ‘new’. To that end it suffers from the same issues for which all software development projects suffer: Marketing/Sales says “ship it now!” while Engineering says, “but wait, it’s not perfect yet!” Revenue vs. expense. From what I can tell reading the posts in the forum, Sense is doing a reasonable job of tracking existing issues/bugs (some of which we may not even be aware), managing a Wish List and churning out updates.
I, too, am somewhat disappointed at the speed with which Sense is identifying (or in a couple cases, misidentifying) specific items in my home (it has only been installed for 5 weeks), but am willing to give the product and company the benefit of the doubt, and some time. The upside is an incredibly useful tool which will, eventually, be ‘marvelous’ in the eyes of Sales/Marketing but ‘still not yet perfect’ in the eyes of Engineering, and just really cool for us end users.
I do respect those who admit they are wrong or do not know an answer to every question.
I would have paid to be a beta tester (maybe not $300). What gets me is the canned response that seems to go no where. I’ve gotten so many I’m focusing on other things in life and hope Sense does figure it out. I see a great tool out of what they have.
Andy Wahl
AC Home Performance
Zehnder America
925-890-5175 achpinc@gmail.com
@vertreesc You have in many ways expressed my own sentiment. I’m about 6 weeks in and device detection has stalled considerably at 15, with just one device detected in the last week. I have had no detection of lights or any small wattage devices.
But I’m OK with all of this.
I read the reviews and message boards thoroughly before purchasing my Sense. I knew the technology was imperfect and I know enough about how technology startups work and the push-pull between engineering and marketing/sales to know that the product was probably less than perfect. In fact, the day after installing my Sense I volunteered for the beta program.
Those running the company have a tough needle to thread. Disclose enough information so people like us get some breadcrumbs to indicate that forward movement is being made. Don’t disclose too much that competitors can get an idea of what is being developed. And most important, don’t disclose information that could chase away sales. This is particularly true under the current model where 100% of revenue (that we can see, I have no idea if the aggregated data Sense collects can be monetized) is from unit sales. This leads to canned and innocuous responses that say “we hear you but we can’t say more”. Add to the mix that the company is taking outside money which necessitates communications from the company be that much more carefully crafted or the principals end up in court.
Sense is a classic example of “Don’t Let Perfection Get in the Way of Progress”. Let’s cut the company, and especially the people that communicate with us here, some slack. They are at the cutting edge of this technology and I think they’re doing a great job so far. The best thing we can do is to keep sending feedback. Then best the company can do is continue to assure us that progress is being made in the form of regular responses and occasional app and firmware updates.
We are listening and working hard to build an awesome product that meets your (and our) expectations! Your feedback is super important to us and we certainly take it into account as we prioritize the development of different features!
I am in agreement with davidferri at this point. While it took Sense a really long time to get my Solar Sense working, I find myself looking at these early results frequently, knowing that if the company gets through the initial rollout and figures out how to monetize their product, I will have been part of a good idea.
Patience is the necessary virtue at this point!
Not to mention that these algorithms take plenty of data in order to generate output. The initial user base is probably a bit heterogeneous, making prediction difficult. For example, I expect a long time before identification of the components in my two stage variable fan speed heat pump, which may not be a staple of all homes currently using Sense. Microwaves, ovens, disposal, etc. are easier to find.
Thanks for the suggestion. That is certainly something we’re looking at doing in the future! The best place to suggest ideas would be the ‘Product Wishlist’ category in the forum.
What do you have a Sense for? If you want to know when each and every electrical device in your home turns on or off, then it’s not the right solution for you. I have been using it as a tool to understand and reduce energy usage - I finally have some measure of what each device is costing me, even if Sense has not yet had enough time to identify most devices. In that sense (excuse the pun), it has already paid for itself in a very short time.
And, yes, of course, I do want to see device-by-device usage and summaries.
Device identification can be done at the source (expensive), or the power fluctuations can de-multiplexed to isolate signals from individual devices, as Sense is currently working on. This is not a trivial exercise. Sense has been clear about this all along.
@dek8ce
I like that idea, I would be willing to enter in my elec rate. There would be no need for Sense to have a huge database of rates if you could just enter in your own.
