PlantNode
One node per machine: running or stopped, bearings, idle air, panel heat and gauges
One head on the machine's starter panel does the jobs of MachineState, MotorPulse, AirLeak, PanelSense and GaugeEye: it reads the stack light, the motor's run/stop and bearing trend, the compressor's idle air in dollars, hot joints in the panel and the machine's dials, and sends it all over one LoRa link.
- Who buys it
- The plant manager or maintenance lead at a small plant with 1–3 compressors and 10–60 machines; compressed-air service shops and electrical contractors fit it.
- Why it pays
- Buying our five single-job products for one compressor costs about $2,928 + $85/month (target prices); PlantNode is $1,190 + $39/month. The jobs themselves are worth about $5,600/yr of leaks fixed and about $10,600/yr of planned instead of failed repairs on a 12-machine plant (est., from the source designs).
- Target price
- $1,190 per machine (4 joint tags included) + $39/machine/month; site LoRa gateway $399 once (target)
- First-minute wow
- One tile per machine that says running, the bearing trend, last weekend's idle air in dollars, the hottest panel joint and today's gauge readings, from one box fitted in an hour.
What the research found
And how this design answers it
- Five chips, three radios and five batteries → one ESP32-S3 brain, one RAK3172 radio and panel power with one backup cell
- Five apps and three gateways → one PlantNode app and one site LoRa gateway
- MotorPulse and PanelSense nodes had their own chip and battery → wired sensor puck and panel eye with no chip of their own
- GaugeEye needed its own arm and D cells → the camera sits in the node head on the panel side, 25–35 cm from the dials
- AirLeak's 24 V wall adapter → the node takes 5 V from a DIN supply inside the starter panel
Use case
Saturday at the compressor
Plant managerMaintenance leadCompressed-air service shop
- 01Trigger: the plant is shut for the weekend but the compressor keeps loading every few minutes
- 02Detection: current and header pressure show 38% idle load; the stack light is green and the motor puck says running
- 03Alert: Monday's report says $175 of idle air last weekend, $9.1k/yr pace; the oil-temperature dial read 92 °C on Friday, up 8 °C in a month
- 04Action: the service shop brings the leak probe and checks the cooler; the panel heat map shows the starter lugs are fine
Outcome: Leaks fixed for about $5,600/yr (est.) and a cooler cleaned before a high-temperature trip
How it works
Architecture
- 01
Sense: stack-light clip, motor puck (IIS3DWB, TMP117), current clamp and header transducer, panel thermal eye, busbar RFID tags, gauge camera
- 02
Decide: one ESP32-S3 runs the five source products' rules: state, bearing trend, idle air, panel heat, needle reading
- 03
Send: one RAK3172 LoRaWAN radio to a site gateway; changes at once, summaries every 15 min
- 04
Tell: one PlantNode app, SMS for stops and hot joints, the Monday idle-air email
Hardware
Real parts, buyable today
Bill of materials: about $720 per machine at qty 1 (est.); the PX3 transducer ($273) and RFID reader ($167) are 61% of it.
| Block | Part | Why this part |
|---|---|---|
| Brain | ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 | Camera interface, PSRAM for thermal frames and stills, DSP for vibration bursts |
| Radio | RAK3172 (STM32WLE5 + SX1262) | Through the compressor-room walls to one site gateway; also the power-cut message |
| Air | Magnelab SCT-1250-200 + Honeywell PX3 + TI ADS131M04 | AirLeak's idle-load method, unchanged |
| Motor | ST IIS3DWB + TI TMP117 puck on a 1/4-28 stud | MotorPulse's bearing trend, wired instead of battery |
| Panel | Melexis MLX90640 eye + ThingMagic M7E-Hecto with Axzon AZN3254 tags | PanelSense's two halves: plastic parts by IR, bare copper by tag |
| Gauges and light | OV5640 camera with 2 x SFH 4715AS IR LEDs; 3 x ALS-PT19 on the tower | GaugeEye and MachineState jobs from the same head |
Mechanical
Printable CAD
8 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.
Loading the CAD…
Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways
Bought hardware fitted inside this part (checked in the CAD: nothing collides with the plastic)
- Node head base with magnets and six cable glandshead-base.stl · ASA, black
- Node head lid with camera window and glare hoodhead-lid.stl · ASA, black
- Motor puck body (1/4-28 stud)puck-body.stl · PA12 or ASA, black
- Motor puck cap with cable holepuck-cap.stl · ASA, black
- Panel eye front with lens holeeye-front.stl · PC-FR, black
- Panel eye back with magnetseye-back.stl · PC-FR, black
- Stack-light clip, 50 mm towerlamp-clip.stl · ASA, black
- Busbar joint-tag carriertag-carrier.stl · PC-FR (production PPS)
Open risks we are working on
- SPI to the motor puck over 2 m of shielded Cat5e at 26.7 kHz output rate is unproven (bench test T2)
- Inside a starter panel: a qualified electrician fits the clamp, tags and supply; arc-flash rules apply and the head stays outside
- Idle air needs the plant's closed hours; separating leaks from real night demand is AirLeak's open risk
- Only one machine per head: plants with many small machines still need MachineState clips or MotorPulse nodes
- Atlas Copco, Kaeser and Ingersoll Rand give free basic connectivity on new compressors; our buyer is the older, mixed fleet
Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.