Instincts
An instinct is a protective behaviour built into Nomad. You do not set them up and you do not wire them together. Every instinct arrives switched on, and if your van has what it needs to watch, it starts watching the day the system goes in.
What an instinct is
Each instinct either warns you, a quiet line in the Log, or alerts you, a managed alarm that keeps re-sounding every few minutes until you snooze it or ignore it. You choose which, for each instinct separately, and you can turn any of them off entirely. Most also have a threshold or a delay you can set to suit how you travel.
Turning an instinct off clears any alarm it was sounding. The instinct that raised an alarm is the only thing that ever clears it, so switching one off mid-alarm would otherwise leave that alarm re-sounding with nothing left watching. On an instinct made up of several checks, turning off one check clears that check's alarm and leaves the rest armed.
One instinct, Drive mode when moving, only ever writes to the Log. Its job is to change the van's mode for you, and an alarm about that would be nothing but noise.
You will find them on the Instincts tab of the Intelligence dashboard, split into Available and Unavailable. An instinct whose sensor is not fitted sits quietly under Unavailable and does nothing, see When an instinct says Unavailable.
The full list
There are twenty instincts, listed here in the same order as the Instincts tab shows them, so you can read down the two together.
| Instinct | What it watches | You need |
|---|---|---|
| Batteries out of balance | One battery far apart from the others on charge | Two or more batteries reporting their charge |
| Battery cell imbalance | One cell drifting out of step with the rest | A battery that reports cell voltages |
| Battery output turned off | A pack with discharging switched off in its own app | A battery that reports its discharge switch |
| Cold-charging protection | Charge going into a near-freezing battery | A battery reporting temperature and current |
| Core storage space | Sensa's own storage filling up | Nothing, always available |
| Core temperature | The Sensa unit itself running hot | A Sensa appliance |
| Drive mode when moving | The van setting off, and coming to rest again | An OBD2 adapter or a GPS source |
| Engine Start | Departure checks when the engine starts | An engine RPM sensor and a shore power sensor |
| Freezer watch | A freezer drifting above a safe temperature | A temperature sensor inside the freezer, flagged Freezer |
| Fridge watch | A fridge drifting above a safe temperature | A temperature sensor inside the fridge, flagged Fridge |
| Grey water full | The grey tank rising above your level | A grey water level sensor |
| Low fresh water | The fresh tank falling below your level | A fresh water level sensor |
| Low fuel near a station | Low fuel and a filling station within reach | A fuel level sensor and Sensa Radar |
| Low leisure battery | State of charge falling below your level | A battery state-of-charge sensor |
| Sensor gone quiet | A wireless sensor that has stopped reporting | A wireless environment sensor |
| Shore power dropped | The hook-up supply failing while you are connected | A shore power sensor |
| Starter battery watch | The starter battery sagging while parked | A SmartShunt auxiliary input, or an OBD2 adapter |
| Temperature watch | Any thermometer rising or falling too fast | A temperature sensor flagged Temperature Watch |
| Vibration detected | Movement that could be tampering or towing | A vibration sensor |
| Water leak detected | Moisture where it should not be | A water leak sensor |
Schengen days is not in that list, and not on the Instincts tab, because there is nothing to switch on or set. It counts your days inside the Schengen area against the 90 in 180 rule and speaks up as you approach the limit, on its own, for as long as tracking is on. It needs a vehicle GPS source.
The markers on a row
Each row carries a small label naming the group of devices the instinct needs something from, for example Water, Battery, Engine or Security. On an Available instinct it confirms why it works. On an Unavailable one it tells you what sort of thing to fit.
A small globe beside a name means that instinct needs the internet to work. Almost nothing in Sensa does, which is why the ones that do say so up front rather than waiting to fail. Today it appears on one instinct, Low fuel near a station, because the nearest filling station is looked up online. The globe describes what the instinct needs, not whether your van is online at this moment.
When an instinct says Unavailable
An instinct sits under Unavailable when Sensa cannot find the sensor it needs. Nothing is broken and nothing else is affected, it simply waits. The row tells you what is missing, for example "Needs a fresh-water level sensor."
There are three reasons, in the order they usually come up.
The device is not fitted. The ordinary case. Fit it, and the instinct moves across to Available on its own.
The device is fitted, but is not named in a way Sensa recognises. For equipment Sensa does not integrate directly, it finds the right reading by the name the device carries. A water tank arriving through a Cerbo GX is often called only "Level", which does not say which tank it is, so the fresh water instinct cannot match it. Rename the tank, either in Venus or in Home Assistant, so that its name contains the words the instinct is looking for, in this case "fresh water". The same applies to grey water.
This one catches people out, because the dials on the Home screen find tanks a different way, by the fluid type the tank reports. A dial can be showing a perfectly good reading while the instinct still says Unavailable. Seeing the value elsewhere in Sensa is not proof that the instinct can find it.
The entity is disabled in Home Assistant. A disabled entity never counts, even though it still exists. Enable it and the instinct picks it up.
There is one more case that no amount of fitting will change. Core temperature reads the Sensa unit's own hardware, so it only works on a Sensa appliance, the unit we supply. Running Sensa on your own Home Assistant, we have no way to read the temperature of a machine we did not build, so it stays under Unavailable. Nothing is wrong, and nothing else is affected.
If an instinct says Unavailable while the reading is plainly visible somewhere else in Sensa, it is almost always the second case. Check the name of the device first.