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IEMI Labs
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IndustrialDesign complete (stages 1–6, rev A), not built, not validated

MotorPulse

Run/stop and bearing trend for small plants, at $99–119 a point

Tells a small plant when each motor, pump or fan runs, when it stops unexpectedly, and when its bearings start trending worse, weeks before a failure, with no analyst contract.

Who buys it
The plant manager or maintenance lead at a plant with 10–60 rotating machines; pump, motor-repair and HVAC contractors resell and install it.
Why it pays
Turning 2 of about 3 yearly motor or pump failures into planned repairs saves about $10,600/yr for a 12-point plant (est.).
Target price
Starter-6 (6 nodes + gateway) $990; extra node $119, $99 at 25+; cloud $2/node/month after year 1, or local-only with no subscription (target)
First-minute wow
A plant board where every machine is a tile (running, stopped, watch, plan, act), and an SMS within a minute when a pump stops that should be running.
See the CAD designConcept page
MotorPulse concept: the idea and where each part goes
The concept. The CAD design is below, under Printable CAD.

What the research found

And how this design answers it

  • Augury, Waites and Fluke are quote-based analyst services → published per-point price, no analyst, local-only mode with no subscription
  • Monnit ($186–455), Banner QM30VT2 ($320) and Fluke 3561 kits ($1,195) are the real low-cost rivals → 6 kHz wideband IIS3DWB data at a basic-meter price plus first-class run hours and unexpected-stop alerts
  • AI fault-type claims invite false calls → only a trend against the machine's own baseline, in plain words, with ISO 10816-3 zones as a reference
  • Unproven 3–5 yr battery with an STM32N6 → one RAK3172, a 1 µA run-check accelerometer, sensor power-gated; about 0.43 mAh/day on a 3.6 Ah cell (est.)
  • Plastic or magnet mounts lose high-frequency signal → PCB clamped to a CNC 316 stainless base on a 1/4-28 stud
  • Building a gateway is a support burden → bought RAK7268V2 with its built-in LoRaWAN server

Use case

Booster pump trips on the night shift

Night-shift leadPlant managerMaintenance tech

  1. 01Trigger: pump P-3 trips on overload at 01:40 while its schedule says it should run
  2. 02Detection: the 1-minute run check falls below the learned threshold for 2 minutes; the node sends a state change at once
  3. 03Alert: SMS to the shift lead, "Pump P-3 stopped 01:40, not scheduled"
  4. 04Action: the lead resets the overload in 15 minutes; next week the bearing trend shows Watch, so the tech books a check

Outcome: About 4 hours of downtime avoided, about $4,000 (est.)

How it works

Architecture

  1. 01

    Sense: IIS3DWB 26.7 kHz 3-axis accelerometer and TMP117 on a stainless stud base; LIS2DW12 1 µA run check every minute

  2. 02

    Decide (node): run/stop with hysteresis; hourly snapshot gives velocity RMS 10–1,000 Hz, kurtosis, crest factor and 2–6 kHz envelope spectrum

  3. 03

    Send: LoRaWAN US915, 6-byte state changes and 31-byte hourly summaries; spectra on request

  4. 04

    Decide (cloud or local): Bearing Trend Index against the machine's own baseline, ISO 10816-3 zones, schedule-aware stop alerts

  5. 05

    Tell: plant board, machine pages, SMS and email alerts, monthly run-hours report

Hardware

Real parts, buyable today

Bill of materials: about $73 per node at qty 1, about $55 at qty 50 (est.); gateway $139–219 per site.

BlockPartWhy this part
Radio + MCURAK3172 (STM32WLE5 + SX1262)LoRaWAN, low sleep current, $6–7
VibrationST IIS3DWB wideband accelerometerFlat to about 6 kHz for bearing data, $16–20
Run checkST LIS2DW12About 1 µA, so the wideband sensor sleeps between snapshots
BatterySaft LS17500 3.6 Ah Li-SOCl₂Wide temperature, low self-discharge, $9.92
BaseCNC 316 stainless hex AF 45 with 1/4-28 studAll-metal vibration path
GatewayRAKwireless RAK7268V2Built-in network server, local MQTT, from $139

Mechanical

Printable CAD

5 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.

See the CAD parts render
MotorPulse printable parts, rendered from the CAD
Render of the printable parts from the actual CAD. Not yet printed or photographed.

Loading the CAD…

Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways

Open risks we are working on

  • Differentiation vs Monnit and NCD is thin on price alone; run hours and the plain-language trend must win the pilot
  • Battery life (5 yr claim) is an estimate until a measured day-profile and a 6-month field log
  • No over-the-air firmware updates in rev A; bugs at ship need site visits
  • BTI thresholds and weights are hypotheses; false Watch alerts would erode trust quickly
  • Not for hazardous (classified) locations, which excludes some process plants

Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.