Valarm Tools Cloud - Tracking Fleet Vehicles, Trucks, and Trailers with Industrial IoT Sensors

In photos here you’re looking at Tools.Valarm.net Industrial IoT sensor systems for monitoring fleet vehicles, trucks, and trailers.

We integrated this specific combination of sensors together for a large, global package shipping and courier delivery services company.

It’s quite useful for a variety of businesses like industrial cleaning companies that have fleets of chemical cleaning vehicles, for which you need to monitor trucks as well as the mobile assets / industrial equipment like vacuums, tanks, and pumps.

These Industrial IoT applications have a variety of sensors, all connected to a GSM sensor hub that sends the GPS / GNSS location data to Tools.Valarm.net as often as you’d like, along with your choice of Industrial IoT factors like:

  • Tire pressure and temperature for each tire via the Doran Tire Pressure Management System (TPMS) to alert you of tire air leaks and changes in tire temperature to help you optimize tire life span and gas mileage efficiency
  • Whether doors, latches, any switches are open or closed
  • Presence of cargo using ultrasonic and infrared distance sensors
  • Water or fluid presence in case of a leak that risks damage to your goods
  • Temperature, humidity, pressure for reefer trailers and cold chain solutions
  • Gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass to detect trailer movement in X, Y, and Z dimensions so you know if the vehicle is oscillating or if there’s been a rollover and the trailer is on its side
  • Equipment Run-Times – Trackers, Counters, and Data Loggers so you automatically know how long your assets and industrial equipment, e.g., pumps, generators, motors, have been running and when it’s due for maintenance

All of this hardware goes into a durable, tamper and weather-proof enclosure that can be powered with each vehicle’s power or even a separate solar power system. The geo-tagged vehicle sensor information is sent to Tools.Valarm.net in real-time where you and your team can easily map, graph, analyze, or forward the data via our APIs to your endpoints, business intelligence or GIS system like the Esri ArcGIS platform.

On the right you see example fleet vehicle tracking maps from Tools.Valarm.net with geo-sensor data from this vehicle monitoring system. Clicking any point on the map shows you the information Valarm got from the sensors at that moment in time like latitude, longitude, doors open or closed, water, temperature, humidity. Here’s a list of key sensor hardware we used:

 

Lessons learned:

  • Had to brush back up on bitwise operations to get the raw sensor data from the Tire Pressure Management System (TPMS) connected to the RS-232 sensor adapter since those tire pressure sensors report their air psi and temperature data in hex. We love getting Tools.Valarm.net software to work with any sensor so you can literally monitor anything, anywhere!
  • Once again we’re amazed at the utility of the Yocto-Knob sensor adapter with 5 input channels of resistive sensors. In fleet tracking it’s super useful for any combination of water presence sensors, e.g., 1 along each side of the trailer and 1 down the middle, plus 2 magnetic door switch sensors telling you when and where doors are opened or closed. That’s 5 sensor factors all easily connected to 1 Yocto-Knob sensor.
  • We’ve integrated with many 4-20mA distance / level sensors and in this setup we used the cost-effective 0-10V sensor adapter with infrared and ultrasonic distance sensors for detecting cargo presence. Remember that this is a great option if you don’t need to run your cables for a long distance since voltage will drop whereas amperage will not. For fleet tracking and vehicle trailer monitoring you’ll likely be running your cables for shorter distances, just inside the trailer, so it’s not a big deal. If you’re running the cables longer, raw 4-20mA sensors will be a better option since they can go up to a mile! See some long 4-20mA sensor cable runs we did in this Valarm deployment with solar powered tank level monitoring.
  • Zipties / cable ties are also awesome for attaching sensors to a demo board!

 

Have a look at our Customer Stories page for more on Valarm deployments around the world.

We’ll help you, your teams, and your organizations monitor flood warning systems, water, wells, and anything else with your own custom web dashboards.

Do you have vehicles, trucks, trailers, or other assets that you and your teams need to monitor and track?

Want to do it with a real-time Industrial IoT solution that’s open, rapidly deployable, and cost-effective?

With Valarm your data is your data and it’s always available in any format you want. We’re flexible and happy to help you configure the best solution for your specific needs.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us at Info@valarm.net if you’ve got any questions on using Valarm sensor solutions to monitor anything, anywhere!

 

Valarm Vehicle Fleet Tracking Mapping Sensors Industrial IoT TrailersValarm Vehicle Fleet Tracking Mapping Sensors Industrial IoT Trailers