Glad to see this going public, I was in on the Beta as well. I now have a total of 4 HS110’s and I decided to apply them as follows:
1- My IT/TV stack. I hav ea 75" plasma TV which I didn’t ever expect to be detected, and in this same area is also all my networking and security hardware, a webserver, and various other always-on devices. Being able to separate this out into a single “Entertainment & Networking” device was awesome and took a huge chunk out of my Always On. I may further split out the TV onto a separate HS110 in the future.
2- Our refrigerator. We have a new LG fridge with a linear compressor, something that I know Sense has issues detecting because of the non-traditional nature of the compressor. Now I have reliable logging of fridge data and am also feeding back hopefully useful Ground Truth data to Sense.
3&4 - Installed today on each of our Chevy Volt EV’s on our 220V chargers. Yes, the HS110 is 240V compatible right out of the box up to reportedly 16A@240V. I did some digging and several of us discussed it at length in the Beta stage, but long story short the HS110 is “Labelled to local standards” (IE 12V/15A) but is indeed plug and play 240V/16A compatible. I have my Volt charging now and my wifes will be charging soon and it’s reporting the amp draw perfectly. Considering how our 2 EV’s constitute a very massive part of our daily draw and Sense was having trouble detecting them because of the fact we have 2 identical cars. This is awesome.
None of those have consumption logging therefore there wouldn’t really be much point in having these interface with Sense.
oshawapblot the TP Link switches would make more sense being linked than Philips Hue light bulb. Which I’m not against the light bulbs but super micromanaging by bulb vs switches get an entire room of lights. The Philips Hue lights don’t track wattage the smart switches would at least be able to classify when w room switch went on and you could classify by room what wattage is on those switches by when they turned on and off match with Sense tracking the increased wattage when then turned on and off. So I would respectfully disagree they would be beneficial to house hold energy usage by room/switch identification in combination with sense.
@oshawapilot,
You have to share a photo of the adapter rig you used to connect the Volt chargers to the HS110s to the wall 220V ! Glad to hear it worked for you.
@iberthiaume,
You’re missing a key detail here. The Hue developers API offers customized formulas for computing Hue bulb power consumption, given each bulb model and state (on/off, dimness level). Smart switches by their lonesome can’t do that. It’s a no-brainer to compute power for all the bulbs in Hue system. And right now, capturing the full power information of a device at the socket (ground truth), concurrent with Sense’s measurements is much more valuable in two ways, than simple on/off status:
You get the full power profile of the device on the smartplug/bridge so it can be included in Sense’s accounting of the household.
The full power profile (ground truth) for the device is also much more effective for machine learning, for identification.
In short, I changed the plug on my 240V to standard pin setup (vs the “one pin sideways” 240V style plug) and the plugged the HS110 straight into that. The 16A/240V Duosida EVSE’s I use came with a plug adapter since they are also dual voltage, so I simply changed to the standard 120V style plug and plugged the EVSE into the HS110. Done.
The only risk with this setup is that someone could plug a 120V device into the 240V plug, but it’s well labelled and the plug is up in the rafters of my garage anyways so there’s basically 0.0% chance of that ever happening.
I totally agree with you. The whole darn point of the Sense monitor = it is a current meter. Why the heck do we need to integrate other current meters. WEMO integration should help with device on/off detection and Sense should measure current. What a waste of my enthusiasm for this announcement.
@RyanAtSense
Thanks to all at Sense for this update. I’ve obtained several TP-Link HS110s and installed them today. This is very helpful for tracking some yet-to-be-discovered devices, and I have also used these to keep track of a conglomeration of devices in a power strip in some rooms. This should help to get my Always On and Other closer to zero.
Some suggestions to make this even better:
(1) In the Sense App, there is an “On/Off” button for each of these plugs on the Devices page. I can see how this could be handy for some devices that you might like to turn on or off from the Sense app. But for SOME devices, I’d like to be able to remove this feature so that I don’t mistakenly turn off a device that is meant to be always on (e.g., a refrigerator). The availability of this button should be a setting we can change by device (under “Manage”).
(2) Why can’t we merge multiple smart plugs like we can other devices? I have seven of these installed which makes for lots of bubbles. For example, I have two set up in my master bedroom to track the entertainment center and another for the electronics in my night stand. I’d like these to appear as one merged bubble called Master Bedroom to reduce the number of bubbles.
Small vent about me messing up last night and wasting time troubleshooting as I can’t read…
So I’m a little frustrated with the overlapping TP-LINK smart plugs. I picked some up last night and Fry’s and managed to grab the HS100 KIT vs the HS110 KIT. I /just/ about posted here asking for help when I FINNALLY figured out how I messed up (as the were not being detected by sense). Weak. Anyway I’ll return these today and have 3 of the HS110’s coming from Amazon same day (thank you for pointing out the deal frankwin.hooglander)
This was a feature that many of us who were in the beta (myself included) expressed concern about, and I was one of the voices saying exactly what you suggested - it should be a user adjustable option to disable this, as again, exactly as you use as an example, I am using one of my HS110’s on my refrigerator, as well as another on a power bar that includes a webserver and such. Neither are devices I want to ever toggle off accidentally for obvious reasons.
It was suggested these options would be included in a future update.
The HS110KIT is just a set of 2 HS110’s if I’m not mistaken?
These will be detected of course, but HS100’s (which do not include energy monitoring) will not.
Did you add the 110’s to the Kasa app before expecting them to be detected? They need to be setup and configured via the TP-Link app to get them on your WiFi (and firmware updates applied) before Sense will find them.
On another note, for those going back and forth about what devices they may want to purchase (TP Link HS110’s vs Wemo Insight) here’s the major benefits of the TP vs Wemo offerings:
TPLink is confirmed 240V compatible right out of the box for those who want to measure 240V devices up to 16A.
The TPLink defaults to ON (or at least it’s last power state) after a power outage. The Wemo defaults to OFF.
For me, both of the above were a deciding factor on going the TP-LIink route.
I agree it would be useful to have switches, but only if you can tell sense what the max wattage of lights are behind it are. Which I bet is why sense picked hue to integrate with. Each bulb can be measured and bulb type is reported by the bridge.
I currently have 60 emulated hue lights all being driven off smart switches. Home assistant drives the switches, ha bridge picks up changes on the light and toggles on an emulated bulb. I had to test each bulb to make sure they lined up with hue watts.
Between the emulated hue and these plugs my “other” has been as low as 23% which I can contribute nearly all of that as my undetected EV (leaf).
Oh it was me completely messing up and getting the wrong thing, getting it setup in the Kasa app last night, spending way too long trying to figure out why it wasn’t being detected before giving up and going to bed. I then realized this morning what I did. I thought I was getting a “deal” as the kit was cheaper than two single ones,but I think that was that was due to it being the 100 vs 110. I also don’t have the HS110’s yet they won’t be here until tonight. Same day amazon does offset some of the negatives of being in a big city.
@kevin1 already got into some of the reasons we went with Hue first, but another important one was the ease of working with their API. That was our first major integration that had to be woven throughout the app (Alexa was less involved), so it served as a great proof of concept for us while also helping to track some common LED bulbs, that are otherwise pretty tough to detect.
As mentioned above by @oshawapilot, this did come up in Beta. It’s a feature we do plan to include in a patch.
We didn’t see to many use cases for that, given that many users would likely have the devices they want merged on a power strip already. I will pass the request along though!
Building off of that @RyanAtSense being able to show devices by room would be cool as an option for bubbles as we already tell sense where the device is at.
Plus one for being able to disable the switch as I plan on using one of my TP-Links one my refrigerator that has struggled to be detected
@RyanAtSense
Here are a couple use cases for being able to merge smart plugs on the Devices page:
(1) To be able to monitor all devices in a room in one bubble when the devices are scattered around the room. (Perhaps @reeftank10 idea of being able to show devices by room could also be used here).
(2) Combine home theater equipment into one bubble – I have a projector, Bluray player, Tivo, Receiver, Subwoofer, etc… I don’t want a separate bubble for all these, but rather a sense of what the entire home theater is using. I can’t combine these all on a power strip, as the subwoofer, projector, and other equipment are in different parts of the room.
Question: I have put one plug on the Panasonic plasma, but can I put another on the power strip that handles TV and the rest of the AV equipment? Would that double count or how does that work? I guess I can get another power strip if I have to.
One or the other. Either the Plasma TV on one smartplug, and the rest on another. Or you can put the whole kit and kaboodle on just one. A lot depends on what you are oping for in the future, plus what you think Sense is going to be able to do with recognition. My personal opinion is that it’s going to be a long, long time before Sense accurately identifies and ascribed the right power consumption to plasma TVs, AV amplifiers and most computers because power consumption is so media-dependent and task-dependent (plasma power, amplifier power and computer power usage can vary by as much as 10x depending on what is “playing” on the device. So I have put most of my TVs, AV equipment and computers on surge protected outlet strips plugged into smartplugs. You just have to watch out for the max power ratings of the smartplugs.
Not wanting to sound like Debbie Downer, but I would caution you before using a smart plug with a power strip with many devices if Sense has detected one or more of the devices connected to it.
If you do not add those devices into the “what is plugged in” section you will basically be double counting power yet retail full Sense device functionality.
If you do add the devices to the strip’s configuration you lose the following functionality while fixing the double power counting and get a more real overall power measurement.
Loss of ability to see each connected device separately
Loss of ability to set custom notifications for any one Ted device
Loss of ability to get on/off notifications for any connected device.
Loss of ability to see the connected device’s usage in the bubble, timeline, or power meter view.
I think the smart plug and strip combo is really only good in its current state for always on devices Sense will never detect.
I have a smart plug connected to a power strip in our entertainment center. Connected to that strip is…
TV, DVR, Xbox One X, Xbox One, WiFi access point, network switch, MoCA 2.0 to ethernet adapter, sound bar.
Sense previously detected our TV, but due to merging it into the plug I’ve lost everything listed above. I’m debating buying another plug and moving the TV onto it by itself.
If the functionality change doesn’t matter to you then carry on.
Thanks for the info, but my primary reason for using plugs is that sense has not detected anything on that strip. In addition to the TV there is a Yamaha av receiver, TiVo, and Panasonic Blu ray that I get no data for currently.
