Proceedings of ISFA2016
2016 International Symposium on Flexible Automation
PLUG-AND-PLAY SENSOR PLATFORM FOR LEGACY INDUSTRIAL MACHINE MONITORING
Shaopeng Liu Judith A. Guzzo
GE Global Research GE Global Research
1 Research Circle 1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY, 12309 Niskayuna, NY, 12309
Email: sliu@ge.com Email: guzzo@ge.com
David W. Smith John Lazos
GE Global Research GE Global Research
1 Research Circle 1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY, 12309 Niskayuna, NY, 12309
Email: smithda@ge.com Email: John.Lazos@ge.com
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we describe a plug-and-play sensor platform
for legacy industrial machine pervasive monitoring, which was
designed, developed and implemented in one of GE’s
manufacturing facilities. The presented solution is a low cost,
small footprint method for real-time visibility into auxiliary
equipment critical to manufacturing operations. The solution
was largely enabled by low cost wireless sensors and open
source edge-devices and software. Specifically, the hardware
consists of sensor nodes that monitor the machines status, and a
gateway unit that connects these nodes with command and
control in the cloud. Benefits of the presented sensor platform
include enhanced productivity, improved energy efficiency and
reduced costs by enabling manufacturers to rapidly gain new
knowledge and insights into their operations through real-time
visibility of critical equipment health.
INTRODUCTION
Participation in the Industrial Internet of Things [1] provides
the opportunity for manufacturers to rapidly gain new
knowledge and insights into their own operations, leading to
enhanced productivity, improved energy efficiency and reduced
costs. Until recently this required customized, costly, complex
edge computing hardware, software, and associated IT/OT
infrastructure [2]. Studies in the past have investigated the use of
networked, embedded wireless sensing devices to monitor and
control the industrial machines [3-5]. Commercial products [6-7]
have also emerged recently to provide solutions for
device/equipment monitoring. However, the cost of development
and widespread deployment of such applications has historically
been prohibitive to small or legacy industrial and manufacturing
sites and therefore such benefits have been out of reach.
On the other hand, machine and process data are essential to
successful on-line monitoring, diagnosis and prognosis. In older
factories, legacy machines either do not have enough sensors or
978-1-5090-3466-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 432
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., 1 - 3 August, 2016
Li Zhang
GE Global Research
1 Research Circle
Niskayuna, NY, 12309
Email: zhangli@ge.com
Michael Grossner
GE Global Research
1975 Noble Road
East Cleveland, OH, 44110
Email: grossner@research.ge.com
do not have a way to easily expose sensor data to external
applications. Machines in a modern factory are equipped with
rich sensors and are connected to other machines through
standard fieldbuses. Custom built hardware and software are
often required to interface with each of the machines. Once data
are collected and aggregated, there is a lack of computing
resource on the factory floor to process the data and make
intelligent decisions. Computers associated with manufacturing
machines are purposely designed for control tasks. Generic on-
premise computing platforms can be added to the factories, but
they are not architected to process large volumes of data in real-
time. It is also expensive and difficult to scale them up to the
level required for training highly iterative data-driven machine
learning models and algorithms. Cloud computing platforms are
perfectly suited for such tasks due to their scalability and
elasticity. However, this requires sending large volumes of data
to the cloud. For example, a typical medium-size GE factory
with machines fully instrumented with sensors can generate up
to 152,000 samples of data per second, or 13 billion samples per
day. Even if the network speed and bandwidth can withstand this
load, the cost associated with transmission and storage is often
prohibitive.
Thanks to emerging low cost software and hardware
platforms, an innovative plug-and-play sensor platform was
designed, developed and deployed to connect the physical legacy
industrial machines to the digital world. The presented system
enables transformation of existing factories and ancillary
equipment into intelligent machines for smart manufacturing. A
GE Power manufacturing site was selected for the proof of
concept to quickly test, demonstrate and validate this technology
platform. It is expected that the developed system will be able
improve manufacturing productivity and provide real-time
visibility into equipment critical to manufacturing operations.
The rest of paper will present the design of the system, including
the system architecture, hardware and software design.
 Figure 1: Pervasive monitoring system architecture.
PLUG-AND-PLAY SENSOR PLATFORM
System Architecture
The system provides real-time operational visibility into
existing manufacturing machinery and their ancillary equipment.
Examples of such equipment are hydrostatic, hydraulic, and
alerts for preventative maintenance and machine uptime.
These requirements pose significant technical challenges and
required a trade-off analysis of various technical parameters and
constraints toward a final architecture and optimized system
design.
Figure 1 illustrates the overall system architecture. The
system consists of four elements: 1) wireless sensor nodes
attached to the legacy machines and their auxiliaries that capture
the operational conditions, 2) an interoperable data acquisition
system – a gateway unit that supports real-time, scalable, and
plug-and-play data collection and handles the uplink and
downlink communication, 3) a cloud server that supports
running diagnostic and prognostic algorithms with and stores the
streamed historical data, and 4) a web portal that provides an
interface for users to monitor the equipment condition in real
time. The system leverages PredixTM, the software platform for
machine diagnosis. In this manner, the amount of data
transmitted cross the cloud and factory floors is reduced.
Hardware Design
The hardware of the system (Figure 2) consists of two parts:
1) sensor nodes (SN) that monitor machine status, and 2) a
gateway located in the facility that communicates between
multiple machines containing the sensor nodes and the cloud
platform for data transmission, command and control.
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coolant pumps. At the onset of the program, key functional
solution requirements were defined, including: 1) small footprint
and tetherless for easy unobtrusive deployment; 2) low cost for
scalability and expandability; 3) real-time equipment status
alerts for scheduling and equipment shut off, and 4) historical
data trending and
the Industrial Internet [8], developed by GE Digital. The
PredixTM platform [9] enables asset and operations optimization
by providing a standard method to implement industrial-scale
analytics and seamlessly connect machines, data, and people. In
particular, the gateway unit leverages the PredixTM Machine – an
important component of the PredixTM platform as the core
framework. PredixTM Machine is a device-independent software
application framework that enables developers to develop new
solutions for data acquisition, data analysis and remote
monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis. The key features of
Predix™ Machine include interoperable I/O and protocol
adapters as well as data-driven computing. The sensor nodes
transmit pre-processed machine data wirelessly to the gateway
unit, which in turn are aggregated and sent to the cloud platform
for on-line
(a) (b)
Figure 2: Hardware design. (a) Sensor node; (b)
Gateway.
Three types of sensor nodes were developed and deployed,
including accelerometer sensor nodes, current transducer (CT)
sensor nodes, and the programmable logic controller (PLC) Foundation), and a ZigBee module (XBee, Digi International
sensor nodes. The combination of the three types of sensors Inc.). The single board computer (SBC) receives vibration data
provides a holistic view of the machine operating status of each pump through the ZigBee interface, performs data pre-
including ancillary equipment, which are used for factory processing, and uploads the processed data to the cloud
productivity enhancement and potential energy savings. All platform.
sensor nodes share the same hardware architecture, as shown in
Fig. 1, and include basic software functionality such as sensor Sensor Placement
data acquisition, preprocessing, and data transmission. Each Figure 4 shows an example of the placement and
sensor node consists of a microprocessor with analog-to-digital deployment of the sensor nodes and the gateway unit on one of
converter, and a RF interface (ZigBee wireless module), and one the legacy machines. The CT-based sensor node is located near
of three types of sensors. the controller box, which has access to the main power control
Specifically, the accelerometer sensor node (MMA7361, of the machine. The accelerometer-based sensor nodes are
Freescale Semiconductor Inc.) measures the vibration of attached to four auxiliary pumps supporting the machine,
individual auxiliary pumps of the machines, which is later including one hydrostatic pump, one coolant pump, and two
interpreted into the pump operating status. The microcontroller hydraulic pumps. The location for these accelerometer-based
board (Arduino Fio, Arduino) digitizes the accelerometer signal, sensor nodes was selected where there was significant
and uploads the data to the gateway through the ZigBee module differentiation between the pump vibration profiles during on
(XBee, Digi International Inc.) wirelessly. The CT-based sensor and off status. Figure 5 shows the placement and deployment of
node consists of a split-core current transducer (CTRS 501X5, the sensor nodes and gateway unit across the factory floor. Each
Flex-Core), and the same microcontroller and ZigBee module. number in the rectangular box corresponds to one legacy
The CT-based sensor node measures the overall machine current industrial machine.
consumption and provides the benchmark for the accelerometer
measurement and prediction of machine operation status. The
current consumption data is also used for energy usage
identification and potential energy savings.
To enable direct measurement of the machine operating
stats, PLC’s were connected to the machine controller and
output on/off states for the machine spindle rotation, axis
movement, and cutting program cycle starting. The PLC sensor
nodes digitize the on/off states of each input into one binary
digit, e.g., 0 corresponding to off state, and 1 corresponding to
the on state. The three binary digits are then combined into one
single decimal number (from 0 to 7) to represent the machine
operating states (Table 1). Figure 3 shows an example of the
PLC data profile displayed in the user interface. The presence of
a blue bar indicates an “on” state, while the absence of a bar
corresponds to an “off” state.
Figure 4: Sensor nodes placement and deployment at
Table 1: PLC SN outputs and machine states one legacy industrial machine.
Cycle Axis Spindle SN Machine States
On On On 7 Cutting with a part program
On On Off 6 Job setup with MDI* move
On Off On 5 Don’t Care Condition
On Off Off 4 Don’t Care Condition
Off On On 3 Job setup or Manual Cutting
Off On Off 2 Job setup
Off Off On 1 Rolling job to prevent job sag
Off Off Off 0 Idle
* MDI = manual data input

Figure 5: Placement and deployment of the sensor

nodes and gateway unit on the factory floor.

Figure 3: PLC sensor node example data. Cloud Platform

Data from individual legacy industrial machines is streamed
The gateway consists of an ARM-processor-based single to and stored in the cloud platform. The cloud infrastructure
board computer (BeagleBone Black, BeagleBoard.org consists of the GE Predix™ Platform running inside an OSGi

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container. It is made up of several different software bundles. enabled by wireless sensor nodes and GE’s PredixTM Industrial
These bundles are modular, loosely coupled and easily Internet Software Platform. System implementation was
extensible. Figure 6 shows the cloud architecture stack. conducted at one of GE’s manufacturing sites for testing,
Supporting the architecture is the Predix™ Core Kernel [6] and demonstration and validation. Benefits include enhanced
the services that it provides, such as the data access and the productivity, improved energy efficiency and reduced costs by
scheduler services. These services are general services that can enabling manufacturers to rapidly gain new knowledge and
be used across a wide range of applications. Built on top of the insights into their operations through real-time visibility of
base services are a service for persisting the machine data to an critical equipment health. Future research efforts will focus on
Oracle database and a service for sending email notifications. At advanced diagnosis and prognosis of the machine condition
the top of the stack are the Representational State Transfer through data fusion from the multiple sensors.
(REST) web services which are used to store and retrieve data
from the database as well as to send notification emails about the
status of the machines. The gateway software interfaces with the
cloud server through these REST web services. A cloud-based
infrastructure provides several benefits, such as allowing for
easy remote access to the data through web browsers, and
enabling simpler support of the system which can be handled by
specialized individuals.

Predix™-Based OSGi Container

Machine Data
REST Web Services

Machine Data Email

Persistence Service
e Service
Predix™-based Core Functionality
Predix™-based Data Predix™-based
Access Service Scheduler Service
Predix™-based Kernel Services
Figure 6: Cloud server software architecture.
User Interface
The Industrial Machine Pervasive Monitoring System has
two options for presenting data to the end user. The first option
is through simple email notifications containing the status of the
different machines. As defined by the end user, these emails are
sent on a regular schedule and allow the plant operators to
quickly know machines status (e.g. “on” or “off”) and required
action (e.g. turn pumps off). Such notifications can also indicate
if there are potential problems with the equipment, such as
excessive vibration. Plant supervisors use these emails to reduce
costs by ensuring machines are turned off when not needed, such
as weekends or holidays. The second option is to view the data
through a web portal (Figure 7). The web portal provides real-
time machine operating condition, overview of machine
productivity, and the data from each of the sensors in the system.
For example, an overview of the milling machine K16 operating
conditions can be seen in the user interface as shown in Figure 7.
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the design and demonstration of a plug-and-
play sensor platform for legacy industrial machine pervasive
monitoring is presented. This solution is a low cost, small
footprint method enabling real-time visibility into auxiliary
equipment critical to manufacturing operations. The system is
Figure 7: Web portal with real-time machine condition
monitoring.
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