Going wireless improves data acquisition in harsh environments

Environments too harsh for wires

OneProd, producers of predictive maintenance monitoring equipment aimed at preventing unexpected breakdowns in industrial production tools, looked to deploy a wireless data acquisition system that could operate in harsh environments.

Traditionally, OneProd used wired data acquisition systems, however, they were costly and hard to install in harsh environments or explosive zones, like in the oil and gas or mining industries. Considerable lengths of cable were required to cover the distance to connect and power the monitoring equipment in industrial spaces that often have difficult access.

source: OneProd

Developing a wireless data acquisition system became an important step in the OneProd strategy in order to avoid any cabling issue and to improve the safety of the staff in charge of portable measures, according to a case study provided by IoT One.

Their solution is the OneProd Eagle, based on Hikob technologies and systems. It is an online solution that has long-range capabilities to collect all required data and detect early defaults, according to Hikob.

A wireless sensor solution for data acquisition

“We design and provide monitoring tools for rotating machines,” said Bertrand Wascat, product manager at OneProd. “We know which data has to be collected and how to use it. But we had to lean on an experienced partner in the field of wireless data acquisition systems. Hikob provided us with a reliable and robust wireless stack and we can count on Hikob to support us towards ISA100 compatibility. Together we developed in a record time a very efficient system for which the sensor and the wireless repeater are ATEX Zone 0 certified. We will continue to improve the solution to stay at the top performance in the market regarding technical features and cost effectiveness.”

source: OneProd

Hikob, a data acquisition company based out of France, provided OneProd with a number of hardware solutions to help cut the cord on data acquisition:

• Sensors
  • A specific hardware architecture for the sensor component of the Eagle solution and integration of Acoem accelerometer specifications
  • A dedicated embedded software for vibratory signal processing adapted to ACOEM specifications
  • ATEX certified sensors (explosive atmosphere)
• Components of the wireless data acquisition network:
  • Turnkey Hikob Azure Lion wireless and autonomous router and Hikob gateway
  • Operating and monitoring system based on Hikob net pulse application
• Wireless communication:
  • 2.4 GHz ISM bandwidth and 802.15.4 standardized wireless communications

An easier way to gather data in difficult places

The wireless solution provided a number of conveniences over previously used hardware:

• Extremely robust wireless communications, no interferences with other wireless networks (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi …)
• Extensive radio network architecture deployment to cover important distances and large spaces
• Improvement of diagnostics reliability: continuous data acquisition and collection, more relevant spectrum of data enabling superior analysis compared to single and isolated data acquisition
• Long life cycle for the sensor part of the system thanks to an optimized management of the embedded computing resources for signal processing