Condition Monitoring using the Bluzone ecosystem is done by mounting beacons onto physical assets such as motors or gearboxes. After an initial configuration the installed beacons will continuously collect and advertise telemetry data (temperature, vibration). This data can be received and forwarded to the Bluzone Cloud by BluFi devices installed nearby.
On the Cloud side, this data is then be evaluated against a specific set of rules defined by a Policy. If the data received from any of the installed beacons starts violating this policy, Bluzone will create an alert and (optionally) notify end-users that there is an issue.
Setting up a Condition Monitoring installation does therefore require the 3 essential steps described below.
Note:
The information below assumes basic knowledge about the Bluzone ecosystem - including familiarity with device provisioning, beacon configuration and policies. If you require additional information about these topics, please take a look at our How-To Guides first.
Policy Configuration
In order to enable Condition Monitoring for beacons in your Bluzone project you need to create one or more appropriate policies. The policy type that needs to be used for this type of evaluation is called "Motion Condition". Please refer to the below page for more details about the creation and configuration of a Motion Condition Policy.
The policies for Condition Monitoring can be created at any point before or after the preparation of your devices. We do however recommend that you only start adding beacons to existing policies after you have properly mounted, provisioned and configured them.
Provisioning / Installation
This step refers to the physical placement of a beacon on the target asset. The quality of an asset's health evaluation in Bluzone depends largely on the quality of the data that the attached beacon produces. There are 3 important factors to keep in mind when mounting a beacon for Condition Monitoring:
- The beacon should be mounted as close as possible to the source of the evaluated vibrations.
- The beacon should be mounted and fixated as firmly as possible to avoid resonance.
- The beacon must be mounted in range of a nearby Blufi.
Beacon Configuration
Before Bluzone can evaluate a beacon's data for Condition Monitoring, you need to make sure that a beacon does actually produce the correct type of data for the policy that you are using. There are generally 3 options for properly configuring a beacon for Condition Monitoring:
- Apply a default beacon template
Bluzone offers a variety of beacon templates containing recommended default settings for different use cases. These can be applied to a beacon and enable them to work with e.g. Condition Monitoring without further setup.
Please refer to the paged linked below for additional information about default Condition Monitoring templates in Bluzone:
Default Condition Monitoring Templates - Apply a custom beacon template
End users can create and edit custom configuration templates to adapt beacon settings to a specific use case. A common way to create a Condition Monitoring template is to clone one Bluzone's default templates and changing the cloned template's settings. - Manually configure a beacon
All of the configuration settings represented by beacon templates can of course also be manually altered on individual beacons.
While beacon configuration in general offers a wide selection of settings, only a few of them are relevant for use with Condition Monitoring. Please visit the page linked below for detailed information about the configuration of a beacon's Condition Monitoring features.