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: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.
upstatemike said: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.
drvnbysound 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?
upstatemike 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.
Neat. How do you reset the green light at the dishwasher?upstatemike 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.
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: