Some "Ting" about it?

[andyvh1959]

Got a free offer from State Farm to get a Ting sensor which supposedly monitors your electrical system for faults and issues. Anyone know anything about this? Aside from plugged in devices, if your electrical system has no issues what could it do?

 

[mjeff87]

Read the 4700 page EULA. It does report back to the mother ship, among other things. The big kicker is that if it detects something, you are obligated to follow their instructions, including agreeing to them dispatching a repair tech to diagnose. You can opt to call your own electrician, but they have to be "authorized". Under the privacy and data collection agreement your sensor data is used to analyze a bunch of other ******** and is used for "community planning purposes" (in so many words).

I like the concept, but I'm too cynical to bite.

edit: oh, and under no circumstances are you allowed to take the sensor apart to try to reverse engineer it. Wonder why. Lol.

 

[Stuart in MN]

Every so often someone will come out with a mystery box that's supposed to do all sorts of magical things, but i've always been of the opinion there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on.

AI has this to say about the Ting:

Limitations. What are the limitations of the Ting sensor?

AI Overview
Ting's main limitations are that it doesn't prevent all electrical fires (missing sudden failures, lightning, or some glowing connections), doesn't replace smoke detectors (only detects electrical issues, not other fire causes), requires power to function (no backup battery), and doesn't track energy use, focusing solely on voltage for hazard detection. It also relies on detecting developing faults over time, so it can't catch instantaneous problems like a short circuit that immediately trips a breaker

 

[andyvh1959]

Just as I suspected. A home equivalent to the "Safe Driver" device you plug into the OBD port so they can monitor your driving. Another way for the insurance company to avoid paying out on claims, under the premise they're helping you live a safer life.

 

[larry4406]

There was another recent thread on this 'Ting.

 

[finn]

We have one.

No issues with it and I have better things to worry about.

 

[txvwnut]

I wonder what it does if you fire up the old tombstone stick welder. That would be one of my main concerns with it is can differentiate between a controlled inrush/high current scenario versus an actual electrical issue.

 

[Just_Steve]

But state farm will pay up to $1k to remediate any issues found by Ting.

 

[bbxlr8]

I took them up on it. No issues or complaints, but don't ever want to pay for the privilege.

It reports/logs outages and also graphs voltage, including brownout - line voltage fluctuations you would never know about. No complaints. I have some sensitive equipment that I run on line conditioning surge protectors. Got them on theory before having the ting and makes me feel better about that investment in hindsight.

I actually needed 2 as my house is weirdly controlled via 2 200 amp panels with separate masters. I am NOT the original owner. Last one was 400a mainbox with 3 100a subpanels

 

[wolfhawk73]

I could have used one of these a couple of weeks ago. Our lights started to flicker when I was at work. Thankfully my bride was home and called me. Said we had a power strip burn up. I broke out my meter and was getting 90V on one side and up to 150V on the other when appliances were cycling on. I threw the main and waited for the power company. Seems that a contractor putting in new cable TV lines cut the neutral on my 400' underground feed. Joy.

 

[Smilodon]

I see no ting... NO TING!

 

[firebirdparts]

I've had one for about a year, I guess. Pretty clever. It hasn't found anything, so I can't tell you how amazed I am by that. I get a report of voltage about once a week. You can monitor it in real time, which is interesting, but you can't go back an hour, for instance.