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 cancel 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.
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
| Instinct | What it watches | You need |
|---|---|---|
| Cold-charging protection | Charge going into a near-freezing battery | A battery reporting temperature and current |
| Shore power dropped | The hook-up supply failing while you are connected | A shore power sensor |
| Engine Start | Departure checks when the engine starts | An engine RPM sensor and a shore power sensor |
| Low leisure battery | State of charge falling below your level | A battery state-of-charge sensor |
| Starter battery watch | The starter battery sagging while parked | A SmartShunt auxiliary input, or an OBD2 adapter |
| Battery cell imbalance | One cell drifting out of step with the rest | A battery that reports cell voltages |
| Low fresh water | The fresh tank falling below your level | A fresh water level sensor |
| Grey water full | The grey tank rising above your level | A grey water level sensor |
| Fridge watch | The fridge drifting above a safe temperature | A temperature sensor inside the fridge |
| Low fuel near a station | Low fuel and a filling station within reach | A fuel level sensor and Sensa Radar |
| Schengen days | Your days remaining in the 90 in 180 window | A vehicle GPS source |
| Sensor gone quiet | A wireless sensor that has stopped reporting | A wireless environment sensor |
| Storage space | Sensa's own storage filling up | Nothing, always available |
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.
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.