Gadgetory

if you're trying to cut down on your home's energy usage it can be hard to figure out which devices are using the most electricity you could always venture out to your electric meter but old analog models like this one at the C net smart home are particularly difficult to read and they don't provide itemized lists of individual devices and their energy breakdown the two hundred and ninety nine dollar sense Home Energy monitor wants to make it easier to see which products are doing the most damage to your monthly electric bill and to some extent it delivers on this promise the first hurdle is installation this is not a DIY process you'll want to enlist an electrician to remove the breaker panel and to hook up your sense unit it should only take them about 10 minutes though after that you can see real-time stats of your home's energy usage in the sense app since learns new devices over time and will shoot you an email letting you know it's identified your dryer or your fridge this worked fairly well but the discovery process took weeks and after more than a month of testing since has only managed to ID three specific devices and two unnamed motors you simply don't have any control over how and when sense learns new appliances and that can be frustrating since told me the strength of your Wi-Fi connection can impact how quickly it finds specific products but even so I expected it to detect more devices in five weeks since is a decent energy monitor if you want to view added glance whole home stats but it doesn't do a great job distinguishing among individual devices it also costs 50 bucks more than its competitor neurio I'd skip cents for now and hope it improves its device detection