3 ms·
I know a niche in hardware, encountered while doing R&D for an F500. High sample rate (20 Hz min.) sensor telemetry (9 DOF IMU + GPS) over cellular network, as
by vsskanth 6y ago
I know a niche in hardware, encountered while doing R&D for an F500.
High sample rate (20 Hz min.) sensor telemetry (9 DOF IMU + GPS) over cellular network, as a single encapsulated unit with built in antenna and a battery to handle power interruptions.
Data needs to go a remote server and devices should be remotely manageable if deployed as a fleet.
I searched quite a bit and eventually ended up using a bunch of Samsung Galaxy phones in a hard case, with a datalogging app and an automation that syncs log files to Dropbox. Devices were managed over TeamViewer.
There are some small players in this field each satisfying 70% of these requirements and they're printing money.
All the pieces are out there. Just need someone to make a product so enterprises can throw money at them.
- trevett 6y agoI like your minimalist solution. Fleet tracking / management seems like a commodity business with a lot of players in it. How do you differentiate and win here?
- vsskanth 6y agoFleet management solutions are built for EDL requirements. They have event based logging and won't log data at high sample rates and don't send it to a server of your choice because they want you to use their subscription based dashboard.
- trevett 6y agoCurious which applications require logging at high sample rates vs. doing event-based?
- vsskanth 6y agoFrom my narrow experience as an R&D engineer in the auto sector: You need to understand the duty cycle of the platform you're developing for (ex. Tires for a vehicle). A garbage truck is going to have a different loading cycle from an EV or a CAT morning truck. If you know the right conditions your product will fail on durability. Fleets are ok with collecting this data for R&D as long as you don't bother them with extra work and give them useful analytics. Data collection devices need to be easy to install, collect for a few weeks and remove. You can also use this as an R&D platform to develop IoT data-enabled products like predictive maintenance, route analytics, insurance and warranty claims etc. ML has a lot of potential here but you need to collect data. Eventually when you have an IoT product you can get a vendor to make an optimized ASIC to collect and process exactly what signals you want. There are many more applications in the auto industry for these kind of niche products.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y agoVehicle crash analysis for one. There's an existing product called the SlamStick that's used to record high-shock/high-vibration environments. They released a paper on using one to find the source of a troubling vibration in a Navy helicopter. I came across them when doing research for a customer in the Vehicle Dynamics space. It's one of those little niches that no one knows about and seems to support quite a few small companies.
- batteryajar 6y agoCould you elaborate? What are these used for?
- vsskanth 6y agoR&D work mainly. To understand the duty cycle of your products (let's say a tire) in the field. To collect data to train ML models or to develop algorithms. Use as a prototyping platform for IoT products.
- thetanil 6y agoi'm in automotive, and we've looked into this a few times for commercial fleet telemetry. It's just impossible to beat the pricing of cheap mobile phones when they have the volumes.
- vsskanth 6y agoYeah pricing really isn't the issue here. We're talking enterprise. The market rate for a data logging device that does something close to this Galaxy mobile is $750-$1000.
- buholzer 6y agoDo you have more information about the industry that would use this?
- vsskanth 6y agoAutomotive. See my other responses in this thread.