Remote sensors warn crews before equipment fails

The challenge

What was going wrong

1. 1

   Decide what to measure

   We worked with field engineers to pick the few readings that really signal trouble, such as temperature, vibration and power status.

2. 2

   Prototype in the field

   We built test units from low-power boards and placed them on a handful of sites. Weather, coverage gaps and battery life taught us what to change.

3. 3

   Build the data pipeline

   We set up secure messaging from devices to a cloud store, with checks for missing data and clear rules for when to raise an alert.

4. 4

   Roll out in stages

   We expanded site by site, trained crews on the dashboard and tuned alerts with their feedback so warnings stay useful and trusted.

• Low-power field sensors

  Rugged units that run on battery or solar and report on a schedule.

• Secure device messaging

  Small, reliable messages that cope with weak coverage.

• Live monitoring dashboard

  A map and status view of every site with trend charts.

• Alert rules for crews

  Warnings sent to the right crew when readings drift from normal.

• Problems seen earlier

  Crews learn about developing faults from readings instead of from customer calls.

• Smarter site visits

  Trips are planned around real need rather than a fixed calendar.

• A base to grow on

  The same devices and pipeline can carry new kinds of sensors in future.

• MQTT Lightweight messaging that connects devices to the cloud reliably.
• Raspberry Pi Low-cost computer used for prototypes and edge gateways.
• Espressif ESP32 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips found in many connected products.
• TimescaleDB Time-series storage on top of PostgreSQL for device data.
• Grafana Dashboards and alerts for live system metrics.