Irish companies Taoglas and LvLogics, a specialist in measuring solid levels in difficult environments, have announced a self-cleaning silo monitoring IoT system for farmers, and wood pellet and biomass users.
 
“Traditionally, users have manually inspected the level of feed or pellets in silos to avoid running out,” said Barry Finnegan, CEO of LvLogics. “In most cases, this leads to emergency deliveries from suppliers and, on average, costs the industry more than €2bn globally per year.”
 
He said the company was excited to help solve this problem by advancing the industry’s digital transformation.
 
“We look forward to further developing user friendly silo monitoring with Taoglas’ next gen IoT technology,” said Finnegan. “We needed a technology partner who had the experience and global expertise to engineer and develop the wireless IoT technology. Taoglas engaged at every step of the process, moving quickly and smoothly from strategic planning to design, engineering and reliability testing of the IoT connectivity of the device. We didn’t need to design our own wireless IoT and were able to leverage an existing reliable platform that was customised to our needs and fits neatly within our product packaging.”
 
He said Taoglas’ complete back-end device management allowed this to be deployed globally at launch with confidence without needing to hire a large in-house team.
 
LvLogics and Taoglas partnered to develop a custom system that automatically monitors and manages silo levels and provides users with secure access to a platform that presents the data in an easy-to-understand format. It is powered by the Taoglas Edge Connect, an IoT hardware and software platform that provides full cellular, Bluetooth and on-board sensors, all from a low-power device, and Edge Insights, a cloud-based software platform that enables real-time insights and business intelligence.
 
LvLogics uses a smart sensor in the silo that continuously measures the amount of stock remaining in the bin. Users can view the measurement from any device and receive email alerts when levels drop below set thresholds. Additionally, LvLogics developed a proprietary self-cleaning mechanism using no moving parts to solve the problem of constant maintenance and unreliability due to dust and the aggressive environment.
 
“In conjunction with the Edge Insights platform, LvLogics allows for years of maintenance-free service and provides real-time automation and insights,” said Adrian Burns, president of the IoT division at Taoglas. “We’re excited to help LvLogics bring this revolutionary solution to market globally and to enable digital transformation to users quickly and cost effectively.”
 
The Edge Connect platform provides device management, sensor management, a full IoT security stack, power management and data-as-a-service out of the box. Combined with Edge Insights, this provides scalable, end-to-end, easy control, maintenance and secure management of many different connected devices, systems, instruments and appliances.
 
The system is deployed in various commercial trials and is expected to roll out globally beginning in the third quarter of this year.