The customer needed a predictive maintenance solution with an industrial IoT platform that could accommodate high data rates, diverse configurations, and local/offline operation. The compressor data gathering devices had different configurations, requiring a combination of on-premises and individual factory configuration.
Due to security reasons, many installations were air-gapped, limiting cloud access. Remote commissioning without internet connectivity was needed, and visualization had to happen on-premises.
For this customer use case, the Nerve edge computing platform was installed on an industrial PC from MOXA with an Intel Core I7 processor, certified for operation in hazardous environments. The excellent real-time performance of the system enabled sampling of signals at 50 kHz.
Nerve includes Nerve DNA (“Declarative Node Automation”), a built-in, intelligent configuration system which permits multi-tiered templating for all configurations in a declarative manner. It is easy to use and especially easy to automate through APIs. A Nerve DNA file is a configuration file for an edge device in human readable YAML format. It contains all possible configurations of a “Nerve Device” (i.e. an edge device on which Nerve is running) and for the applications installed on it..
This Nerve DNA file can be modified by the user through a templating system that enables the definition of a functional template which is valid for many nodes, and then to individualize this template for specific nodes to adapt them to their installation. Examples for such individualization are local network settings and software versions, but also the list of functions installed on the node and their configurations, such as the number of pressure sensors to be read by the system. Through this approach, the Nerve DNA system enables scaled rollout of diverse edge devices.
In Nerve, the edge device itself is the single authoritative source of the current and correct configuration. This property, in combination with an easy-to-use management interface at the edge device enables modification of the declarative configuration file DNA on premises, after installation, and even in air-gapped systems. The system will synchronize all configuration data when it comes back online after having been disconnected. Full offline operation is also possible.
Nerve DNA simplified the configuration of numerous edge devices online and offline, removing the need for the customer to create a complex configuration system for their predictive maintenance solution. This allowed the customer to focus on developing the best predictive maintenance algorithms while leaving configuration and operation to the Nerve edge computing solution.
About the customer
Our customer is active throughout the world in the oil, gas, automotive, and process industries, as well as in the area of safety solutions.
