Sense home energy monitor
- Thread starter swaggy
- Start date
upstatemike
Senior Member
About 15 years ago I was part of a test group where my local utility was testing this sort of "power signature" technology to map energy usage. At that time it worked OK for big things like refrigerators and furnaces but really couldn't do much with lighting and small loads that appear in various combinations at different times. Maybe the technology has improved but I am skeptical. Right now my Brultech power monitor combined with Homeseer lets me do a lot of cool things that I doubt this thing could match.
Thanks for sharing, good info. I would hope that the technology had improved considerably with machine learning and cloud being the norm these days. I'm surprised about their business model though: one time hardware cost and no ongoing subscription fees? In this day and age with almost everything that's cloudified that has a monthly subscription fee, this seems unusual.
pvrfan
Active Member
My guess is that they are crowd-sourcing the device identification. Say you buy a new gadget and power it up. The Sense box captures a "signature" and asks the cloud to ID it. When the cloud can't, I presume the user gets a prompt asking what just powered up for the first time. Maybe is asked to take a picture of identifying marks or what not. Eventually, the cloud is updated.swaggy said:
The company needs users submitting this info to the cloud or they would spend forever and a day identifying new gadgets. Better to give 'free' access to the cloud and let the crowd do most of the leg work.
Craig
drvnbysound
Senior Member
upstatemike said:
Can you provide any insight as to what the Brultech allows you to do?
It's been a while since I looked, but I was under the impression that their stuff was essentially monitored at the sub-panel/breaker level. Is that the case or no?
I've looked into these devices. They are good with the big appliances. Not so good with the smaller ones which likely makeup 60% of your electrical usage. Nothing wrong with that, but don't expect miracles. If you can live with 60% being unknown, then its probably helpful, but if you are expecting to see how much power your router uses compared to your 24-port switch, don't count on it.
upstatemike
Senior Member
drvnbysound said:
It is breaker level monitoring but it has a plugin for Homeseer that lets you do more than just log and monitor energy use. When my oven is on I have an announcement remind me every 15 minutes exactly how much energy it is using so I don't forget to shut it off. When my dishwasher runs Brultech notices the energy draw and flips on a Relay on my Elk panel The relay drives a green LED near the dishwasher so everyone knows the dishes are clean. Stuff like that.
drvnbysound
Senior Member
upstatemike said:
Thanks. This is stuff that I've never even considered... which is why I asked. When I looked at their stuff and saw it was breaker-level, I really couldn't come up with anything that I'd use it for... which makes it very hard to justify the cost.
upstatemike
Senior Member
The "green=clean" LED is mounted in the corner of a standard switch plate. I use an old X-10 3-way slave switch (momentary switch) connected to an Elk input as the reset switch. Whoever unloads the dishwasher just hits reset to turn the light off. The LED is bright enough to annoy everyone until someone unloads the dishwasher... anyone hitting reset without actually unloading gets yelled at but that hasn't really been an issue.
macromark
Active Member
Sorry... late to the thread. Sense and Smappee both have the same basic product (whole house energy sensor that deciphers power signatures) and both companies are IFTTT channel partners (as are we). So... using IFTTT, you should be able to launch a HomeSeer event with a specific appliance turns on or off. I can see a lot of applications for that including receiving notifications when the washer, dryer, microwave (etc) turns off. You could also set up and event to alert you if someone forgets to turn off the stove/oven.swaggy said:
The Brultech option is a good choice too but the resolution is typically limited to the whole circuit unless you install CT clamps locally on individual appliances. Brultech wins the reliability contest too, as it's all about local monitoring. Sense and Smappee are internet dependent.
