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As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not a spring chicken anymore. Joints are a little stiffer, I don’t move as quickly as I once did, and I don’t always spring back from an injury as fast as I used to. I, like many others, try to take care of myself as much as possible with regular exercise, annual visits with my doctors, and a healthier diet. One other thing I’ve taken up is incorporating wearables into my daily life. As the technology has progressed, devices such as Garmin smartwatches and Qardio blood pressure cuffs can provide useful metrics that might indicate changes in your health before they become serious.
Not so different from us, machines we use both commercially and residentially require routine maintenance to continue functionally efficiently. Newer vehicles even now come with a wide variety of sensors that can tell you when you need to change your oil. Predictive Maintenance is a concept that incorporates the use of various sensors that allow you to monitor equipment to help determine its condition. Predictive Maintenance has the potential to provide cost-saving benefits by minimizing downtime and affording the ability to schedule necessary maintenance before unexpected failures or accidents occur.
STMicroelectronics STWIN SensorTile Wireless Industrial Node (STEVAL-STWINKT1) (Figure 1) is a comprehensive development kit and reference design that simplifies prototyping and testing of advanced industrial IoT applications, such as condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. The STEVAL-STWINKT1 is based on a Core System Board, which features a wide range of embedded industrial-grade sensors. The Core System Board consist of an ultra-low-power Arm® Cortex®-M4 Microcontroller and a range of industrial-grade sensors for 9-degrees of freedom (9-DoF) motion sensing, vibration analysis across a wide range of vibration frequencies, including very high-frequency audio and ultrasound spectra, and high-precision local temperature and environmental monitoring.
Figure 1: STMicroelectronics STWIN SensorTile Wireless Industrial Node (Source: Mouser Electronics)
Coupled with a rich set of software packages, optimized libraries, and a ready-to-use cloud dashboard application, users can design and implement their applications much more efficiently. Some of the onboard devices provided with the STWIN SensorTile include ISM330DHCX 3D Accelerometer + 3D Gyro iNEMO Inertial Measurement Unit with Machine Learning Core, IIS3DWB Ultra-Wide Bandwidth MEMS Vibrometer, and IIS2DH Ultra-Low-Power High-Performance MEMS Motion Sensor.
To get started using your own STWIN SensorTile, check out our Getting Started article that will take you step-by step through the process. The article will provide you a list of necessary equipment and software you’ll need to download, as well as walk you through the software installation. It will provide instructions for configuring your hardware to connect to STMicroelectronics dashboard as well as how to download and install all the necessary security certificates. Once completed, you’ll be on your way to visualizing data and configuring your dashboard to provide real-time alerts.
Joseph Downing has worked for Mouser Electronics for six years, coming on in 2011 as a Technical Support Specialist and later moving to Technical Content Specialist. Joseph has worked in the electronics industry for 20+ years with companies such as Intel, Radisys, and Planar. An avid Maker, Joseph helps to manage and provide technical projects and material to the Application and Technology site on Mouser.com as well as Trade Shows. Joseph can be reached at joseph.downing@mouser.com.