Say what you want, but you can't say I don't have any Sense


 
Clint

Clint

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I've been noticing the Sense Energy Monitor for a little over a year or 2, saw a $50 off special for fathers day & I finally went for it.

I installed it Saturday afternoon & it's pretty interesting! The power company notices always show "energy efficient neighbors" and then there's me.........at 1.5-2x their consumption. It's still new and devices are recognized slowly, but I'm noticing patterns on my powerline similar to what you'd see looking through an oscilloscope. It's sensitive enough that when I set my phone in its inductive charging coil I see "+10 watts", and when I remove it, "-10 watts", from the graph.

I watched a bunch of setup & review videos before buying it, and had to talk to my electrician friend who replaced my panel back in ~2011 to find out how to connect it, mine's not as easy as most, I thought it'd be going back.

https://www.techhive.com/article/3334140/sense-review.html
 
Nope - just connects to wifi. No port forwarding, no cost other than the initial hardware.

There's an app for android/iphone, just login using a web browser on win10 machines.

https://sense.com/technology
 
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Clint said:
Be sure to let me know if you discover anything nefarious :)
Click to expand...

Hang on, let me get my tinfoil hat.....

In all seriousness, there's a lot of IoT devices that I flat-out will not have in my house, especially if they require phone-home or "check in with the Mother ship" capabilities.
 
"At Sense we take security very seriously and we do everything we can to ensure your data is secure. All communications between the Sense monitor, the Sense cloud servers, and Sense apps are encrypted with AES 128-bit encryption and TLS/SSL (HTTPS). Sense uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud servers and online storage. Personally identifiable information like email address and account information is stored in physically separate systems from any application data. Physical security is managed by Amazon and access to these production systems is limited to a very small group of Sense engineering team members.

Automated systems process the data collected from Sense monitors to detect devices, send notifications, generate report emails, and power the Sense apps. Sense never shares any of this data with 3rd parties without explicit user opt-in on a case-by-case basis (for example, when a utility wishes to provide discounts/services to their customers in exchange for sharing limited power data.) Sense support employees will on occasion need to access some of this data to troubleshoot issues, but again we will only access this data with explicit permission from you."

I'd post a couple interesting anecdotes but they're listening right now :)
 
Clint said:
Be sure to let me know if you discover anything nefarious :)
Click to expand...

JKalchik said:
Hang on, let me get my tinfoil hat.....

In all seriousness, there's a lot of IoT devices that I flat-out will not have in my house, especially if they require phone-home or "check in with the Mother ship" capabilities.
Click to expand...

Clint said:
"At Sense we take security very seriously and we do everything we can to ensure your data is secure. All communications between the Sense monitor, the Sense cloud servers, and Sense apps are encrypted with AES 128-bit encryption and TLS/SSL (HTTPS). Sense uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud servers and online storage. Personally identifiable information like email address and account information is stored in physically separate systems from any application data. Physical security is managed by Amazon and access to these production systems is limited to a very small group of Sense engineering team members.

Automated systems process the data collected from Sense monitors to detect devices, send notifications, generate report emails, and power the Sense apps. Sense never shares any of this data with 3rd parties without explicit user opt-in on a case-by-case basis (for example, when a utility wishes to provide discounts/services to their customers in exchange for sharing limited power data.) Sense support employees will on occasion need to access some of this data to troubleshoot issues, but again we will only access this data with explicit permission from you."

I'd post a couple interesting anecdotes but they're listening right now :)
Click to expand...

Famous last words Clint. I side with JKalchik on this one.
 
Clint said:
"At Sense we take security very seriously and we do everything we can to ensure your data is secure. All communications between the Sense monitor, the Sense cloud servers, and Sense apps are encrypted with AES 128-bit encryption and TLS/SSL (HTTPS). Sense uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud servers and online storage. Personally identifiable information like email address and account information is stored in physically separate systems from any application data. Physical security is managed by Amazon and access to these production systems is limited to a very small group of Sense engineering team members.

Automated systems process the data collected from Sense monitors to detect devices, send notifications, generate report emails, and power the Sense apps. Sense never shares any of this data with 3rd parties without explicit user opt-in on a case-by-case basis (for example, when a utility wishes to provide discounts/services to their customers in exchange for sharing limited power data.) Sense support employees will on occasion need to access some of this data to troubleshoot issues, but again we will only access this data with explicit permission from you."

I'd post a couple interesting anecdotes but they're listening right now :)
Click to expand...

Yup... just lost me. I suspected that data sales had to be part of their business model.

This device is probably only useful as long as the external servers & services are available.
 
This seems about as scary as my "smart" sprinkler controller, which also connects to the cloud to adjust run times for weather conditions, it's not like the hidden gps/image stream from DJI that's going back to China.

Not saying it's not a possibility but the only info they have from me is my email address. I suppose it's possible they got info from the google play store when I downloaded the app, but the only info they have is timezone & email.


One of the things that makes this work is them analyzing the electronic signatures, and it takes months to recognize most of the devices connected to the system. My first device was ID'd this morning, a laser printer (one of 3 that are used regularly). The rest has been cut into 2 groups: "always on" and "other".

I unplugged the modem & it stopped streaming, not sure if it's able to be a stand-alone web server, I'll try to connect to it as soon as I have nothing better to do.

Installing this also gave me the start in the right direction to finish running a 20 amp circuit to my shop for the AC that always trips when the compressor comes on. I was planning to have a friend do the connections in the panel but I did it last night - I've done a bunch of high voltage but this is the first time I've been in a panel.
 
I agree about the security. I like having a "dumb" house. I have a secured wifi network in the house. My windows phone is dumb since Microsoft/AT&T quit support and all I needed was a phone. Only semi-smart device I have is my Smoke and that only to it's own remote. I cringe about our 2014 Taurus which doesn't have a key and a Samsung TV which requires linking to our network. I don't use the cloud either. I do physical computer backups weekly. I still have every hard drive from every computer I've owned since 1992. Needless to say, I like old-fashioned keys and fire safes to protect valuable documents.
 
One of the significant issues with IoT devices isn't their purported usage, it's that they end up on a shared house network. This is generally considered to be a "safe" network with little protections where both ends of a connection reside within. This is now a foothold into owning everything in your house.

Me, I have 4 separate WiFi networks, and the guest network is isolated, even from other guests, i.e. guests only get to the gateway, can't even see other guests.
 
And now that this has come back around on the gee-tar.... (Sorry, Arlo!)

Turns out that one of my coworkers has installed this quite a while ago. He figures it paid for itself in short order, it allowed him to pinpoint a mini-fridge with a failure that caused the motor/compressor to kick on for long periods of time unexpectedly.
 
JKalchik said:
And now that this has come back around on the gee-tar.... (Sorry, Arlo!)

Turns out that one of my coworkers has installed this quite a while ago. He figures it paid for itself in short order, it allowed him to pinpoint a mini-fridge with a failure that caused the motor/compressor to kick on for long periods of time unexpectedly.
Click to expand...

I'm enjoying it. It misidentified the 2nd device (of 2 that it's found).... it showed my vacuum being used 21 times in the week, but the vacuum was only actually used 2-3 times in the week but the 180psi compressor kicks on a few times per day. So turn on the vacuum or the compressor & it says "vacuum".

No surprise, but my house's always on is >double the average Sense users. I'm surprised to see how little electricity my reef tank lights consume, I expected ~400 watts x 2, but it's only ~150 watts total. I've picked up some replacement can lights for the kitchen, I noticed my office & bedroom lights both drew ~100 watts, I put in LED lamps, now both combined they're ~28watts. Can't wait to see what it says when I fire up the welder.

This is going to take some time to get everything identified.
 
Somehow, I doubt many of Sense's users have air compressors at all, let alone welders, etc.

I've already replaced most of the lighting here with LEDs. I still have 2 incandescents on the lowest floor, and 4 outside. The mechanical room has a pair of 4' fluorescent fixtures, my mancave has 8 although 1 has been replace with an LED fixture. I do have 4 tower systems and a small disk farm running downstairs, though.
 
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