Condition monitoring for motors, pumps, compressors and fans
What actually fails on each type of rotating machine, which measurement sees it, where the sensor has to go, and why mounting method decides whether any of it works.
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Engineering insights
Engineering notes on building connected products.
In-depth articles on industrial IoT, embedded engineering, connectivity and product development, written for the engineers and technical buyers who have to make these decisions.
OT/IT integration: MES, ERP, historians and the unified namespace
Getting data from the control layer into the systems that run the business. What each system already holds, why point-to-point integration stops scaling, what a unified namespace does and does not give you, and…
Read the article ↗What industrial IoT actually is, and how to start
Five layers, and a weakness in any one caps everything above it. What the term means in engineering terms, what it is used for, and how to begin without wasting the budget.
Read the article ↗Asset tracking and remote monitoring: choosing what to build
Where it is and how it is are different problems. Positioning options compared, why the fix costs more than the radio, and the obligations that come with tracking vehicles people drive.
Read the article ↗Machine vision for industrial inspection: what decides whether it works
Lighting decides more than the camera, a fixture beats software for presentation variation, and defining the defect precisely is harder and more important than choosing an algorithm.
Read the article ↗PCB design in practice: what decides whether a board works
Stack-up, placement, power distribution, thermal behaviour and manufacturability. The schematic says what is connected; the layout decides whether it works.
Read the article ↗Embedded firmware that survives the field
Architecture, interrupts, memory, watchdogs used properly, and diagnosing faults you cannot reproduce, on devices that must run for years with nobody present.
Read the article ↗Cloud backends and dashboards for device data
Ingestion bursts, time-series storage and cardinality, retention, what really drives cloud cost, and dashboards designed around a decision rather than around the data.
Read the article ↗Product cost reduction: where the money actually is
Component prices are rarely the opportunity. Part count, over-specification, assembly and first-pass yield usually are, and knowing what each change triggers decides whether a saving is real.
Read the article ↗Measuring OEE and energy: where the time and money actually go
Why the single figure hides what you need, how your own definitions change it, and why energy per unit produced is the measure that actually changes behaviour.
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