Once you have created a Sense Home account and connected it to your home's Wi-Fi, Sense begins to identify patterns in your home's electrical usage. Soon Sense will begin to tell you it has found a device (a heat source, a motor, etc.), will offer a short list of hypotheses as to what the device might be, and will ask for your help to properly name the device relying on your knowledge of what's in your home.
This process continues over time. Your home's electrical use is busy, and Sense relies on input from repeated or extended use of each device or appliance to recognize its distinct signature. The first device identification(s) may occur in 2-3 days, though it could take 1-2 weeks. Sense will continue to identify devices well beyond this startup phase. Throughout, your active participation is important. For more information on device detection, see these articles:
- How does device detection work?
- Can I help Sense learn?
- A Sense user wrote this blog, which tells you what to expect
One thing you won't need to do is to try to list all your devices yourself. Please allow Sense's machine learning enough time to do its work. Later, you may decide to add smart plugs to monitor 1 or more devices, but the simplest path is to see what Sense can identify in your home on its own. For many homes, Smart plugs aren't necessary at all.
And as you wait for devices to be detected, there are steps you can take to ensure your success.
- Become familiar with the articles at help.sense.com. Scroll through the blogs archived at blog.sense.com.
- Scroll through the app and its many reports. For a walkthrough of the Sense Home app, read our blog Understanding the Sense App.
- If it makes sense, set your electricity rate, set up time of use rates, and/or adjust your billing dates. This article shows you how.
- Set goals and start to track your progress.
- Over time, look for irregularities in the readings that could signal an issue.
- Since the Meter button centered in the app's menu is one of the first components to send you data, look here to learn how start to save money now. Start to look around and, if you're on your mobile device, use your fingers to expand the view up and down, or side to side. You may even want to turn a large device on and off and watch the meter readings change.
- Take a walk around your house and look for appliances and devices that are always on, and therefore also using power. See if there are any you can turn off. This blog discusses how to take charge of these "energy vampires."
- If you already have Smart plugs installed, configure your Sense app to recognize them and report their usage details. Here's how.