The Power Meter is one of the most powerful features of the Sense app.
Now the Power Meter is available immediately upon installation to help you start to understand your real-time energy use, track down energy hogs, and see the cost of your Always On devices. With this change, the real-time capabilities of Sense are brought front and center, making a powerful tool even more accessible. We’ve also made some small user interface changes to the Power Meter itself: the date format has been changed to the more standard ‘month/day/year’ format and we’ve added a gradient to the meter graph.
For Sense Solar users, you can still access Solar from the Now screen by double-tapping the Solar bubble as well as tapping the solar production value in the Now screen.
For more details on in-app accessibility changes, check out our Power Meter update announcement. As always, let us know what you think in the comments below.
Patch: iOS v31.1 / Android v31.2
Following our v.31 release focused on some alterations to Power Meter functionality and in-app navigation.
Added functionality includes:
Zoom scaling options have been added to the Power Meter, making it easier to view different time windows without pinching/zooming.
You can now access your Usage screen by tapping the wattage icon at the top of the Power Meter.
Solar users can access the Solar screen by tapping the solar icon at the top of the Power Meter.
I like all the changes but one, the gradient. The darkest gradient shade is almost the same darkness as the line itself, and makes it harder to distinguish from the shading that is below the line, in turn making it harder to identify minute variances in the line. The problem appears to be made worse if the line is closer to the top of the scale, an effect that is even visible in the example photo of this post.
Power Meter itself: the date format has been changed to the more standard ‘month/day/year’
This is not standard! Maybe in the US but not in the majority of the civilized World. Why not make this an option that can be set by the user?
Removing Solar button with the argument of easier realtime access? Strange Solar is realtime … anyhow why not let the user choose what he wants on his/her taskbar?
I use the solar tab more than anything else. Not a fan that it moved from its dedicated tab to under a sub menu. Which now requires two taps from either two places. The bubbles view or trends.
Why remove the 24 hour power meter view in Trends and the option to see the power meter instead of the bubbles on the Now screen? The new power meter button in the navigation bar is great and all but why put the effort into removing other ways of viewing the power meter just to highlight this one? I used the 24 hour view daily to check for suspicious activity and now that’s just gone.
Couple things. The 24h view in trends was a great tool to quickly notice changes in consumption. It would be GREATLY missed if it’s gone for good.
Also, the solar box in trends is useless to me personally and I’m sure a lot of people. A solar offset box would be great though. I unfortunately can’t control when my power gets used for the most part so while the powered by solar metric is Interesting a solar offset % is more of my concern. The solar button on the bottom will also be missed as now it’s a couple step process to get to that page.
Aside from that it’s nice to see work being done on the interface. Thanks.
Not a fan that you took the 24 hour power meter view off of the trends button. I use that religiously to check the spa and furnace and how many times it comes on in a day. The new power meter shows about an hour. It takes to long to zoom out on the new button. No easy way at a glance to show a 24 hour day. Currently unusable for me so I don’t log in much anymore to check the app. Put it back under trends please
I agree with all the posters that miss the power graph on the home page. That coupled with the event log in the same view was the page a looked at over 50% of the time.
The app is far less useful to me now. Now to figure out how to go back to the old version…
@aj.vandenberghe does zooming in or out on the Power Meter help with this? The Power Meter line should be a bit bolder than the rest of the gradient in every view.
Each of the suggested methods require a tap under some other sub menu. Vs a singular tab that was dedicated to it.
If I am in the meter view. I’d have to go to another view and tap solar. Vs. Meter view, then just taping the solar tab at the bottom.
Ultimately, I use the Sense app to get information quickly. Since there is no APIs where I can get the info I want and show what I want directly thru other means, I have to use the Web App or the Mobile app.
The Web app shows wattage numbers in the bubbles. The Mobile app does not. The Trends tab in Mobile has all the triggers I’ve set (which shows up on other mobile devices using the same credentials.) The Web App does not.
Thou the gradient look is nice. I’d still like to get to key information with minimal menu diving. And consistency between the two platforms.
@JustinAtSense zooming can help, but here’s two examples of the same trends to show what I’m talking about. Toward the top of the scale (first image), telling the line from the gradient is very difficult. If I shrink, yes, it becomes easier to distinguish, but by shrinking down I also reduce the resolution dramatically.
It appears that at the top of the scale the gradient color and line color are the same, if keeping the gradient I’d suggest keeping the max darkness of the gradient so that it is lighter than, and not equal to, the darkness of the line, as this was never a problem for me with the monochromatic shading used earlier.
@ymilord If you land on the Now screen and tap the Solar icon, it should be one click away. That being said, I like the feedback focused on being able to navigate directly from the Power Meter to the Solar screen and understand it’s not necessarily easy to navigate to Solar outside of the Now screen currently.
The web app came long well after the mobile app. Parity is a work in progress, but ultimately both interfaces have some distinct strengths and certain features work better in certain platforms.
Appreciate you taking the time to provide more insight into your feedback. We’re discussing this in our internal feedback.
is one of the most powerful features of the Sense app.
in the Now screen.
on the “Now” screen. One tap and you’re back at the Solar screen!
