Tech Briefs Magazine - May 2023 - Sensor-7

TECHNOLOGY LEADERS Sensors
Condition Monitoring Comes to Smalland
Medium-Sized Enterprises
I
ndustrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
advances have long been the province
of large enterprises. These businesses
have the investment to pay for the
strategy, sensors, edge devices, and data
analytics capabilities required to power
IIoT services such as condition monitoring.
They also have teams that can support
these strategic initiatives.
Now, broader availability of sensors,
evolving capabilities, and new digital
platforms and tools are making IIoT capabilities
more readily available and easy
to manage with small teams. As a result,
small- and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) can now gain the same digital
capabilities their larger peers already
benefit from.
Condition monitoring is the process
of observing equipment to detect changes
that could indicate an impending
fault. Teams can use condition monitoring
technology to remotely oversee
equipment for signs of atypical vibration,
pressure changes, position changes
of key components, speed of equipment,
fluid properties, temperature changes,
and humidity, as well as to gain an overall
picture of operating conditions. By
so doing, teams can take immediate corrective
action when sensor data indicates
machine stress, as well as schedule preventive
maintenance to keep equipment
operating in peak condition.
" Whether it's a large refinery, a remote
municipal lift station, or a commercial
craft brewery, all these facilities
have systems and equipment that need
to operate within a specific range of parameters, "
said Erin Byrne, chief technology
officer for TE Connectivity's sensors
business unit.
" When that equipment is not performing
properly, productivity and sustainability
are reduced, and you risk a
breakdown that can range from being
merely annoying to, in the case of an oil
or gas facility, a potential environmental
catastrophe if it results in a spill or excessive
emissions, " said Byrne. " You can't
manage what you can't measure, and
that's where industrial and commercial
condition monitoring comes into play. "
Organizations that deploy IIoT condition
monitoring technology achieve
multiple business gains. A Deloitte paper
found that predicting failures with
advanced analytics and taking action
can increase productivity by 25 percent,
reduce breakdowns by 70 percent, and
lower maintenance costs by 25 percent.
IIoT sensor trends, such as low power
requirements, wireless capabilities, digitization,
miniaturization, ruggedization,
and sensor fusion mean that these sensors
can be leveraged for more use cases,
placed in tight spaces, and can provide exceptional
performance in harsh environmental
conditions. Low voltage requirements
eliminate the need for new power
management technology, while wireless
configurations make IIoT system installation
simple, quick, and inexpensive.
Teams can also use digital technology
to monitor equipment remotely and
make production adjustments using an
app on their smartphones.
" Recently, at TE, we collaborated with
Preddio Technologies to improve condition
monitoring and make it widely
available for smaller-scale applications.
Our joint solution can now be installed
in even the most remote locations. With
the combination of Preddio's wireless
technology and cloud-based analytics,
along with our low-power sensors, remote
monitoring is now possible for operations
of all sizes, " said Byrne.
We utilize our own patented long-range
Bluetooth 5.0 advertising technology to
provide high bandwidth data to mobile
devices and gateways up to 1000 ft away,
and sometimes even greater, depending
on the environment. For greater distances
or environments with significant noise,
we leverage LoRaWAN as back channel.
Sensor sampling rates are based on
the application and types of signals
measured. Millisecond
rates can be
Figure 1. Whether it's a large refinery, a remote municipal lift station, or a commercial craft brewery, all these
facilities have systems and equipment that need to operate within a specific range of parameters. (Image: FXQuadro/Shutterstock)
Sensor
Technology, May 2023
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achieved for dynamically changing signals.
Meanwhile, alarms and threshold
information are stored on the device, to
limit data amounts and processing complexity
in the cloud.
We provide our own mobile app, a
digital twin-focused cloud dashboard,
and standard API to export data for
further analytics.
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