Mechatronic Solutions LLC

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Mechatronic Solutions LLC

Mechatronic Solutions LLC specializes in extracting value from IoT and test measurement data, and the deployment of hardware and software for data collection.   My 32 years of experience with product durability and performance testing, data acquisition, data analysis, and validation in the automotive and agriculture vehicle industries is leveraged into my services.   I bring a full scope of mechatronic solutions to my customers by including my life long passion for programming and electronics.  

 

My Approach

Before you start collecting data, you should have a good understanding of the factors that influence your product or process performance, robustness, and efficiency.   It would be ridiculous to go fishing with every type of bait and lure, fishing in every location, at all times of the day, in all tidal conditions.   Eventually you will catch the target fish, but you will have wasted a lot of time and money.   If you don't know these factors for sure, then conduct a design of experiments to determine what they are.  

Once you know what factors affect your product / product performance, the next step is to determine the order of magnitude of the frequency content of whatever factor you intend to measure with a sensor.   The frequency content of what is being measured will drive the choice of sensor used for measurement, and the sample rate required.   If your sensor's response time is too long relative to the frequency content of what you are measuring, or if the sample rate is too low, then the data collected will be confusing, misleading, and useless.  

The final step is to determine the required structure for the data measured and recorded.   Although the industry norm is to push raw data from the microcontroller to a cloud service, a much more efficient tactic is to first analyze the data locally at the microcontroller, and then transmit the results out to the cloud.   Using the microcontroller as an Edge Device can reduce the IoT device to cloud communications by an order of magnitude or more, and enable low power MCU operation of the IoT device.  

Visit my blog to see a step-by-step guide on how to plan a data measurement strategy that will prepare you for the implementation of a global enterprise IoT connectivity management platform.  

 

Scope of Services

I can help you determine the frequency content of whatever you are measuring, and then tell you the maximum sensor response time and minimum sample rate that should be employed.   I will work with your team to determine the product characteristics or process variables that influence your product/process performance, and I can guide them through a design of experiments if necessary.  

Once the basic data collection parameters are determined, I can help you to either choose and deploy commercially available product and services for your needs, or I can create a custom hardware and software solutions, beginning from data collection and all the way to data storage, visualization, and analytics.   I am fully proficient in developing custom and very low cost electronics with firmware within a custom enclosure when the project dictates that need.   I know how to minimize transmitted data payloads, and to use secure protocols efficiently.  

My specialization is the management and analysis of Big Data.   Throughout my career, I worked with very large pools of test data, and in my last years with a major agricultue manufacturer, I developed and deployed a global system for the management and analysis of test data.   That data consisted mostly of gigabytes of data collected daily by thousands of different types of machines working for months in the field worldwide.   I made it easy to import and enrich that recorded data with metadata, so that it could be categorized and searched.   The final system enabled any engineer worldwide to, for example, look at the performance of a component in a particular engine model, across different products distributed worldwide.  

 

Testimonials

 

Some of My Clients

Clients for large projects I am sub contracted for are not listed below for confidentiality and other reasons.

 

Do you need help with your project?   Send me an email using this form or to requesting a free phone / web share consultation.  


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