Hmmm, that is long. Mine is a front loader. I may not keep this thing if that’s the case. I’ve got less than a month to make a decision.
How long did it take for your dryer to show up on Sense?
I installed at the end of the day on October 7. The dryer showed up this morning.
Oh that was fast I had mine for past 3 months and still don't have the dryer showing up
I suppose it must depend on how much "noise" there is in your house. My house is small and our panel is only 100 AMP, so not all that much going on. My calibration was very fast (finished on the morning of October 8), so I suspect that I either did an exceptionally good job of installing it, or there's not that much going on here, so calibration was simple. I'm guessing it's the latter.
But my Front Load washer is VERY distinctive in its motor signature. If this thing needs 1.5 years to figure that out, then they're not doing something right and I need to maybe rethink my purchase decision. I have until November 10 to make a decision. Hopefully I'll see something in the next few weeks.
I use a TED Pro Home from the Energy Detective: http://www.theenergydetective.com/
By far not as flashy as Sense and it doesn't do any kind of "Appliance Detection". It monitors individual circuits and I monitor my washer, dryer, dishwasher that way as I my house was wired in a way that made it possible to do it via the circuits. Pretty happy with this one and also wrote a driver (local via ethernet, no cloud involved) that I published here: [Release] TED Pro Home Energy Monitor
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Thanks for the feedback Dan. I looked at that along with Eyedro 4. Both are really expensive for me. Around $430 CAD ($323 US) for the TED with just two clamps and $500 CAD ($375 US) for the Eyedro 4, both are before tax prices. The Sense was $330 US after duty and shipping, so still a stretch, but will be worth it to me if it can find my washer and report it more accurately than my Aeotech HEM, which often gives false alarms for the Washer due to its very low power use during the cycle while filling or even just rotating the drum.
I'm beginning to think about alternatives. Seems to me if I could monitor one of those TP-Link outlets with energy monitoring in HE, that would satisfy my dishwasher and microwave/convection oven for less than $100 CAD, and then for the dryer and washer I would close a Zigbee contact with a relay when they turn off. Two 240v coil relays and two Xiaomi contact sensors would be just $40.
Although the other features and the ability to possibly spot a problem with the Sense is compelling, I'm not sure now if it's worth the $430 CAD price. I did test my Aeon on the mains coming in, along side the Sense. Had to go through a couple of drivers to find one that read close to the same values, but I did get within 30W (over) of what the Sense was reading. So while it's very cool to be able to analyze my fridge compressor in such high detail, I could probably live just fine with simply watching the wattage increase when it turns on.
Really undecided at this point. If I know myself, I will work just as hard at convincing myself that I need this really expensive device, as I would at rationalizing its existence in my home.
Yes, these systems are not cheap, any of them. I didn’t get mine to just do washer announcements and actually used it to find power hogs in my house and save money. It was bad way when I started... By now I can say that the system paid for itself but it is really a long road to see a return on investment, if you can achieve that at all.
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Yep, and it doesn't look like I'll ever be able to do that. I spent some time last week turning breakers on and off and watching the overall power consumption. There's no surprises other than I didn't realize I was using 175w for all my IoT stuff, NAS and switch. But that's a non-negotiable for me 
That stuff is as efficient as it's going to get.
I could replace my kettle with a rapid boil model and I'll save a little. I could replace my refrigerator with a newer, more efficient model and save a little (although the reality is we'll probably get a model the consumes more because my wife wants the bottom freezer next fridge). I could also replace my Microwave/Convection oven and save a little too (which is already the plan at some point when the new Amazon version is available here). But I will not save money by replacing working devices, with new devices that only save a little.
So for the consumption part, I'm so much at the low end already, I'm actually a bad example for that. So it may actually be wiser for me to focus on the device announcements I want to achieve. But I do love my gadgets, and so goes my personal struggle. 
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My use for Sense was to learn and (gradually) minimize my energy use footprint. It also picked up a malfunctioning fridge before it broke down completely. But I don't use it for any home automation (although it would work for the dryer and water heaters). It will not work for my washer - I have to use a power-monitoring plug for that.
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It's not that you didn't set the expectation with me. I wouldn't call this buyer's remorse, but maybe just an enlightened view of what I really needed here, versus what I like. It's a good product and I'm not discounting it's viability in anyway.
I will let things run their course and see what happens before I make any rash decisions.
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I have the Emporia Vue.. I am pretty happy with it cost of the system is great. Its not local but the data is minimal. it monitors the mains and 8 circuits. I can watch each circuit or overall usage.
the app is decent the cloud server seems pretty reliable. They are a new product but I have no complaints.
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Wow! It has some shortcomings vs Sense, but for $145 CAD delivered, it would be really nice to see a local integration with that in the future if possible. I'm a little concerned by companies like Nero and the lot that are cloud based. Funding and partnerships were definitely weighting factors with Sense that made me less apprehensive about their dependency on cloud. Nothing worse than a smart device that you spent $145 on and it's suddenly unusable, by no fault of your own.
From strictly the perspective of device power monitoring for triggers, that Emporia is a great price. Too bad that nothing exist yet, but definitely one to watch. Thanks for pointing me to it.
No problem. I am happy with it for what it is. Hopefully it gains popularity.
Agreed the cloud thing is pretty worrisome. I only paid 89USD for it when I got the expansion version. It has went up to 99 now. that price for just a energy monitor is pretty hard to beat. and it has the fancy graphs on the app that better half can view.
I have talked with the support about integrations did not seem to be their focus. They do have a web integration for computers coming from what I was told.
they have a zigbee based unit coming out for people with smart meters. I think all it does on the zigbee side is connect to the meter socket which is zigbee then it bridges to wifi and their cloud.
I have a front load samsung washer and samsung gas dryer and it found both for me farly quickly,
How long is fairly quickly?
Around 3 months or so it tends to find devices that pulls a fair amount of amps quicker than the smaller things. I have had my sense for over a year and although I have since changed things and deleted a few I'm up to 31 devices that includes hue and tp-link with there direct integrations though. Like I said we changed some appliances it had already found so I deleted those roughly 7 or so devices. I really like sense though the detail it provides and the ability to base smart automatons off dumb devices is cool and worth the investment for a single device to me.
We bought a new gas stove recently and it found it in no time as well. Which was pretty cool it seems anything to do with heat so I assume pulling a lot of amps it finds pretty quickly. Hell it even identified part of my Samsung fridge just wish it would find the lights in that so I could automate things if the door is open to long.
The one thing that kills me is I have two servers running 24/7 and it has yet to identify them but I imagine most people don't have enterprise grade servers in there home environment so maybe one day?
I just wish the hubitat community would find an easy way to integrate it in the hub. I still have my SmartThings hub though and I'm considering bringing that online just for that ability now. Tired of waiting for a good solution with Hubitat.
I forgot to mention I have a fairly busy household so to me that's not to bad it really finds tools easily as well. Such as miter saw I rarely use and a few power tools My always on is above 80% of normal sense users just to give you an estimate of how busy it is.
Well, I reached out to Sense, used my Aeon HEM app data to give them the precise time my washer cycle started and stopped. Was hoping with their experience, they could tell me the likelihood of Sense finding my washer before my Amazon return window closed.
The response was kind of shocking, especially since the front load washer they show in this video at 5:02 min, really isn't that drastically different from mine. Suffice to say, it's boxed up and ready to ship back.
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|Zach (Sense)
Oct 23, 10:13 EDT
Hi there,
Thanks for confirming.
Taking a look into this from my end, it appears that your particular washer is a newer, high-efficiency model. As such, its electrical signature varies from what we would typically expect from a washing machine. With this in mind, Sense will not be able to directly detect your washer as its own device. We do apologize for the inconvenience here.
I would like to point you toward is our smart plug integration feature. This allows Sense to communicate with smart plugs and directly monitor certain usage in your home in this manner. This is a useful way to gain insight into devices that may otherwise be difficult for Sense to detect.
Again, we apologize for the inconvenience here. We do hope that you find enough value in your Sense monitor to keep with it and I would encourage you to check out Sense Saves to see how other people in Sense community have done this. If there is anything else I can do to help, just get in touch.
Contact sensor on the door(s). Inexpensive, easy and instant gratification.
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That's kind of disheartening. The cynic in me thinks Zack was looking at a full inbox and really didn't put much effort into it.
