Telemetry for site support equipment: Connecting controller-enabled Assets

Sep 15 2023 | #getyourdatatowork series, Construction, Rental, Telemetry value

Getting started with telemetry across a fleet can be pretty daunting, and our customers often ask us what telemetry solutions they should look at purchasing. But the answer, unfortunately, is always… ‘It depends ☹’ – there are many factors that come into that decision, one thing is certain though, you have to start somewhere, to satisfy your short-term needs.

Throughout this series, we will try and point out the different types of systems to look at for different types of equipment, their pros and cons from a data perspective and the impact on what you can/cannot do upstream leveraging a platform like Perspio™. We will look at different telemetry concepts, from OEM supplied down to the basic ‘Slap’n’track’ solutions you may find in the market. Once again, we will leave the telemetry management side of things to the side here and focus on the data aspects, but as a reminder, the following table stays generally true:

compressor, lighting tower, pump, generator tracking

 

And to kickstart this series, let’s look at a first set of equipment: Compressors, Generators, Lighting Towers & Pumps.

generator iot, compressor iot

Why these 4 things together you may ask?

It boils down to how these assets operate and how they are interacted with, generally through a control panel on the equipment. Typically, this control panel would be manufactured by the likes of Deep Sea Electronics, ComAp, or Smartgen, but there are many more control panel manufacturers out there, these are just the most common ones we have found on this type of equipment.

So, when you are looking at telemetry for those assets, as we mentioned before, it really depends on what you are trying to achieve by installing telemetry in the first place.
If you’re simply trying to understand where it is, and how much it is used, then look to the right of the table – if you want to retrieve more data around its operation, and even remotely control the asset, then the left side is more suited.

Ultimately how you interact with the data from these assets is also an important factor. Let’s look in more detail at what the various telemetry solutions above, combined with a context-aware platform like Perspio™ might support your operation:

 

compressor telematics

 

You can cover a number of valuable outcomes from just the basic telemetry capability (Slap’n’Track, wired, and AEMP2.0) on your equipment. These are the must have fleet management data points:

  • Location
  • Utilisation
  • Service Interval Management.

The smarter you get though, the more impactful the data generated from the asset can be – being able to prepare a field service call by having all the information about the fault pre-populated in the service team’s systems, with parts ordered requires access to a deeper level of data.

Another area is equipment purchasing.  Being able to rank equipment across your fleet based on reliability gives you a key metric for purchase decisions.  This also gives you an idea of your customers’ experience with different categories of equipment from different manufacturers – How much lost time due to faults/breakdowns?

There are valuable outcomes at each level of telemetry and how many of these you’d like to have in your business is a decision to make with your teams.  Remember though, there are flow-on effects to monitoring assets remotely which are increasingly making their way to market – financial products like insurance or leasing increasingly leverage telemetry to support risk management.

A context-aware IoT platform like Perspio™ is capable of greatly limiting the implementation required to reach the benefits you are after, without needing an IT team to manage the system.

Not every piece of equipment needs a really smart connection (though you can even monitor levels and usage on portable toilets, particularly if you run high-attendance events).  Some categories of equipment though have a set of benefits from greater telemetry data both inside rental operations and for customers.   Generators, Pumps, and Lighting Towers have those benefits and we’d be happy to demonstrate how this is achieved with your existing fleet.

Please feel free to reach out to the team – hello@inauro.io or click below – to discuss automating your telemetry-based workflows across your field operations!

 

Reach out to learn more!

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