Sense Energy Monitor - Another One Bites the Dust!

Looks like Sense is getting out of the residential home energy panel monitoring market.

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Yea, kinda sad. I loved how they presented it as "Very exciting news" in the forum. :melting_face:

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I am still very happy with my two IoTaWatt energy monitoring systems. 100% local and completely Open Source (hardware and software.) I just wish they were still being manufactured. Unfortunately, the tariffs have made that small business model unprofitable for now.

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Do you know of any others that are local?

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Here’s another one

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Another option is the Emporia Vue system. I installed one of these earlier this year at my parent’s home. It is currently using the default firmware and cloud-based app. Works great for my dad’s needs. I picked it as I AP saw that the Home Assistant community had successfully figured out how to load ESPHome on it, to make it 100% local. So, I figured it was somewhat future-proof should the cloud side disappear in the future.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C79PNK84?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_3&th=1

I also liked that it is installed inside the panel, is powered by adding 240VAC breaker, and can use either Ethernet or WiFi (with an external antenna) for connectivity.

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Never came across Brultech before... Interesting.

A lot of these get away from the residential beginnings... I backed Neurio when they started as a Kickstarter. While it worked pretty well it never quite lived up to the full promises of appliance detection... But I did not care about that. Then they got bought by Generac and did not appear to be sold anymore. Incorporated into Tesla Powerwalls and such. Then they announced they were discontinuing any further work on Neurio (not that they had released any new firmware except to rebrand it), disabling the app, etc... Thankfully it DOES have a local webpage and json data that can still be polled. But I am still looking for something.

My ancient Aoetec HEM still works also... I may look into getting a newer one of those.

Yeah, a bit more expensive, and a bit harder to integrate - But it IS local (I use it with MQTT to interface to HE), and the big plus is 32 channels + 1 Wire Temps (8?) + Pulse Counters (2?) so it can interface with a lot field devices.

My service is 2x 200A panels, with solar, so even 32 channels seems a bit on the "low end" - Again, it somewhat depends on your use case, as to what's the best fit.

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@dennypage

FWIW, this one also integrates directly with Home Assistant ...

https://www.amazon.com/Supports-Assistant-Real-Time-Consumption-Electricity/dp/B0DJNV3GPR/r

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I've been using the Brultech Greeneye monitor at my home for some time now - maybe 5 years or so? It is great to have individual CTs for each circuit. I never got around to integrating it with HE though I do see the dashbox has a MQTT publisher. I guess I'd need to run an MQTT broker somewhere else on my network as an intermediary?

They are not going to sell the hardware anymore, but haven't said they're closing their doors. For those of us that have their hardware, we should not see a significant difference if what they say is true.

Cloud only, true but it's been reliable. Detection isn't as great as originally promised, but it's fine. The TP-Link plug emulator for Home Assistant (thank you @aaiyar for telling me about that) is a great way to get energy monitoring capable devices into their software. I even have Aeotec energy monitors feeding into the Sense app using that emulator.

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Same. And your analysis is accurate. FWIW, they are more than 40% owned by Schneider.

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Maybe Brultech has gotten better, but I used them like 10 years ago, and it sucked. You had to run their data collection software on a windows PC 24/7, and it used Microsoft Access or something for a database, and after a half million measurements, the software became totally unusable and you had to whack all of your data and start over. There was no integrations to other things. It made me angry everytime I had to work with it at all.

Yeah fortunately, their interface options have somewhat improved. - I was never a fan of their "dashbox" and I never used it - It seemed too "closed" of an option to me (even though it is local - and your comments about MS access limits (I thought it was based on MySQL, but I really don't know) sound painful.

I really like their ESP-BEE communication option, that can send data directly to a MQTT server, which I run Mosquito on a RPi (I use this a my central integration hub for a bunch of disparate systems) - For history, I dump that all into InfluxDB, where is also where I store my HE history, then Grafana, etc. - Before they added the HW option for MQTT, I ran the Btmon Python script (on the same RPi) to get their packets into the same MQTT server. - I also run a MQTT client app on my HE so I can pull and push selective data to/from the MQTT as well.

So just saying the Brultech "canned stuff" (software) isn't really ideal for custom integration - I do believe there is a native HA integration, so that's a viable path for data collection as well. - The Brultech HW offerings is where things are a positive, IMHO - The 32 channels, pulse counters, 1-wire temperature sensors, all in one box. You can collect alot of analog sensor data in a single piece of HW.

So yeah, I never got to "experience" their data collection software.
Some of their options are (including the hated Dashbox) are here

One I retire, I may write a HE specific driver to pump data directly into HE, as the concept for communication is nearly the same as the IoTaWatt system - Just more child devices.