Configurable monitor and parts management system

Abstract

A monitoring and maintenance system that utilizes imperial and theoretical data to compare parts, vehicles, users, regions, wear intensity indexes over time and tracking information to provide a sophisticated data collection system for heavy-duty equipment or rental equipment. This tracking is designed to better the specifications, designs, training, preventative maintenance, and replacement wear understanding of fleet management.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]Some embodiments of the present invention relate to heavy duty equipment. The costs to operate and maintain heavy duty equipment can be expensive. Further, downtime of heavy duty equipment can be a key factor in the costs associated with heavy equipment. Maintaining well-organized and well-oiled equipment can help ensure safety and keep costs at a reasonable level.[0002]Tracking hours of use of heavy equipment and where heavy equipment travels during use can provide assistance in service and maintenance of heavy equipment—it can also help reduce the costs, for example the cost per ton of mining can be lowered in some situations.[0003]Although advanced GPS tracking and telematics monitoring has been installed on many pieces of heavy duty equipment, these units are expensive, difficult to install, and difficult to use.[0004]Further, these systems do not enable tracking of work tools that are used in connection with heavy duty equipment. For example, th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]In another embodiment, the system may associate a heavy-duty vehicle and a work tool using sensor data such as accelerometer or vibration data. For example, an HDi monitor can be affixed to a work tool that is or will be installed on the heavy-duty vehicle. The heavy-duty vehicle and the work tool can be associated based on a comparison of the sensor data from the HDi monitor affixed to the heavy-duty vehicle and the sensor data from the HDi monitor affixed to the work tool. In this way, the system can detect whether a work tool is installed to a particular heavy-duty vehicle. The system can also detect whether there is an issue with the installation, for example, if the work tool is not installed properly on the heavy-duty vehicle.

[0018]HDi monitors in the system can include one or more communication systems for communicating with other HDi monitors in the system. One communication system may be utilized for intra-vehicle communication and a different communication system may be utilized for external communication, for example with other heavy-duty vehicles, an application on a user's smart device, or a remote server. In one embodiment, a social mesh protocol enables the system to know what other devices and communication types are available within the network. In one embodiment a pre-authentication mode such as the advertising mode in BLTE enables communication between and among Bluetooth devices about the status and metrics collected by various devices in the network. In this way, devices in the heavy duty social mesh network can communicate quickly and without authentication.

[0020]In one embodiment, moveable equipment, such as a heavy-duty vehicle can have a plurality of work tools selectively physically coupleable to the equipment and an accelerometry network can determine which, if any, of the work tools are physically coupled to the equipment. A primary accelerometer is affixed to the moveable equipment for collecting primary accelerometer data and secondary accelerometers are respectively affixed to the various work tools for collecting secondary accelerometer data. A controller can analyze the primary accelerometer data and the secondary accelerometer data to determine the physical coupling relationships between the work tools and the moveable equipment. For example, similar accelerometer data in a work tool accelerometer and the equipment accelerometer can indicate the work tool is installed to the equipment. The inverse can also be true, dissimilar accelerometer data in a work tool accelerometer and the equipment accelerometer can indicate the work tool is not installed to the equipment. A communication system can facilitate communication among the accelerometry network components including the accelerometers affixed to the work tools and equipment, and the controller.

Problems solved by technology

The costs to operate and maintain heavy duty equipment can be expensive.

Further, downtime of heavy duty equipment can be a key factor in the costs associated with heavy equipment.

Although advanced GPS tracking and telematics monitoring has been installed on many pieces of heavy duty equipment, these units are expensive, difficult to install, and difficult to use.

Further, these systems do not enable tracking of work tools that are used in connection with heavy duty equipment.

These work tools can be easily misplaced on a job site or a dealer lot.

Although some heavy duty equipment have engine control modules or other systems for interfacing with a telematics or monitoring system, a large portion of the heavy duty equipment market does not have such an integrated system.

Typically this is only for the more expensive devices, as the cost was high.

The problem with some of the past solutions was that they exposed connections and required connections or specific alignment.

This exposure to failure makes this a less than favorable solution and requires specific proximity.

The key problem is to have a physical entity that moves and informing associations through that movement and a communications link.

One problem is how IOT devices can recognize machine and social interactions that are possible within this ecosystem.

One problem with this approach is that there is a greater ecosystem of communications available for these devices and for these users.

Another issue with known IOT devices is that within a network only specific interconnection or network uplinks are allowed and these are preprogrammed from identification and user configured.

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