Remote Mining Monitoring System
Description
This project was developed for a world class mining equipment manufacturer that needed to monitor conveyor rollers responsible for transporting minerals through very long distances in a mining plant. The purpose of the system is to detect the need of predictive maintenance on the conveyor belts, which is done by measuring vibration and temperature on the rollers.
Technical Details
The system consists of a network of sensors that collect data from the conveyor belts and send it to a central gateway via Bluetooth Mesh.
The gateway is a local Linux server that receives the data and stores it in a MySQL database. It also hosts a web dashboard that displays the data in real time and allows users to check out historical data points.
This system is connected to the internal IT infrastructure of the client, which allows them to access the dashboard from anywhere inside their network, providing the needed security for the application. Each network has its own gateway and sensors, making it a unique system for each mining plant.
My role in this project was to setup the whole Linux server infrastructure, including:
- Linux server setup and configuration
- MySQL database table schema setup and configuration
- Develop services to collect data from the Bluetooth mesh network and store it in the database, using multithreading and asynchronous programming in Python
- Develop a web dashboard using JavaScript and Grafana to display the data in real time and allow users to check out historical datapoints with the appropriate SQL queries
- Configure the local network to allow access to the dashboard from anywhere inside the client's network
Results
The system is currently deployed in a couple mining plants at remote areas in Brazil. It is a very successful project that has been running for more than two years now, with very little to no maintenance, besides the occasional battery replacement on the sensors.
