Just replacing septic field at my old house in So.MD. Had to dig two long trenches 21ft deep to hit sand. Backhoe only reached 18 ft so he kicked me out of the seat, dug a hole for the backhoe to sit in and tilted it up on 2 wheels. Difference between paying someone $10,000 for a new field or doing it ourselves at a cost of about $2000.
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And that made Dad smile! 
(the resourceful solution, as well as the $)
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Looks cool to me! I have a couple devices that measure whole-house levels of electricity. Theyāre cool, but I honestly basically never look at the data theyāre collecting. If this Sense thing can truly āfingerprintā individual devices, and then feed that data into an easily-reviewed UI, that would be very convenient.
Like others here, I also routinely hook up a Kill-a-watt to my new devices to see what kind of load theyāre drawing, but Iām not studious enough to actually permanently record that information so I always end up forgetting it before too long. Having a lilā devices that records everything for āmeā (and also Senseās data-mining servers) could be pretty interesting and useful in the search for āenergy vampiresā.
I look forward to hear how it works out for you @bill_laba! Actually, Iām MOST interested to hear about any instances where it DIDNāT work. I can learn the hype from the marketers, Iām more interested in the failures that I may end up encountering as well.
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Stay tuned and be patient. Iāll get it up and running this week and post some info here. From what I hear, it could be a while until it learns more about my usage and starts reporting.
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Hey, the bill went down $40 this month! 
@karaelena ā thanks for posting those links. The z-wave energy monitor looks like a great deal. Iām unclear on exactly what kind of z-wave interface I need to talk to it, though. The Samsung z-wave hub has an app and I assume that through that app you can check the power gadget? Is that generally true for other z-wave hubs?
LOL ! 
Get a phone emulator running on your computer, bluestacks is one of the more popular ones.
Also, just bought one of these. The reviews are good on them from what I can see of a newish product. Not sure how I havenāt heard of it until now as itās right up my alley. Thanks for posting.
Hope I didnāt steer you wrong. Havenāt installed mine yet. If it recognizes items adequately, it looks to have a few nifty features in the UI. If you search for the YouTube segment on This old House about it youāll see other things they are working on, like recognizing problems with items it monitors. They mention a furnace ignition not firing up on the first try as a sign of a maintenance item as opposed to it being a mid winter emergency.
So long as it fulfills the basic functionality, which appears to be doing I am good. New tech, is fun, will be interesting to see what they can squeeze out of the information they gather.
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So finally got this thing installed, the big downside to the device is you need a professional electrician to install it (im not that comfortable playing with the main lines). In my case that cost $200 bucks more on top of the sense device. Was pretty disappointed in that.
Other than the cost, the app is pretty cool and straight forward. Its showing my real time energy usage while it trys to figure out what is on. Iāll report back after a couple of days to see how many devices itās identified.
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I recall a pamphlet from Xcel about the new smart power meters they were testing out (this was maybe about 5 years ago). One of the benefits, it said, was that using a real-time display to show users the real-time cost of the power they were using made people more likely to turn off lights, tvs, and stuff that they were not actually using. I have no idea how much of that was marketing, but it sounds legit.
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I still havenāt gotten mine installed. Like you, I didnāt want to crack open the breaker box. My delay is based on having an electrician come in and install an additional circuit and outlet for the Glowforge. Iām going to save some $$ by running the Romex across the house, but have to cut holes in the joists for it according to local code. I got busy at work and havenāt taken the time to move furniture, pull out the drop ceiling panels and drill the holes. Soon,hopefully. Then we can share stories about device discovery.
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Iāve got a smart meter and a real time usage application installed. The really cool part is this was all free of charge from the local power company (DTE). Mostly, I think this was a major cost savings for the power company as they no longer need to send someone out to read the meter.
@newbies_234 donāt feel bad as I donāt think the application is as powerful as the one you have described as it does not automatically identify what is running and how much power it is using. I many cases Iāve been able ti monitor the power usage while turning things on and off to see the change, but nothing automatic. There is a new version of the application being released in the next couple weeks so maybe it will be improved in this area.
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My first apartment in college I shared with four other guys. They ridiculed me for going around and turning off the lights. I said it saved us a lot of money. They said it didnāt. I said they were wrong. For a month they went around turning off the lights just so they could ridicule me with proof. When the next bill arrived they became more militant about turning off anything not in use than I was.
Of course my method only works when youāre not the ATM paying all the bills.
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So iāve had this installed for about two weeks now and overall Iāve got to say im pretty disappointed. The sense has found 3 devices but was not able to identify what they were. So quite a gap there between the claimed functionality and the true functionality.
The real-time energy usage is kind of neat, and itās made me a bit more conscious of my usage, but overall, the thing simply doesnāt do what it claims. Even with a fancy new network discovery function, which should all but instantly identify networked devices, itās found 0 of those.
So yeah, unless this thing starts identifying items left and right, iād skip this entire thing and just buy a handful of smart outlets. The price we pay for cutting edge tech!
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