Vibration Condition Monitoring using Machine
Learning
M Zekveld and GP Hancke
Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
Corresponding author: gerhard.hancke@up.ac.za
Abstract—This paper describes the design and
implementation of an embedded wireless vibration condition
monitoring device. The goal was to design a device that uses
machine learning techniques for fault diagnosis. A MEMS
accelerometer attached to a microcontroller measures vibration
and transmits the data wirelessly to a gateway. It is shown that
the device is able to diagnose faults.
Keywords— condition monitoring; machine learning; wireless.
I. INTRODUCTION
Maintenance on machinery such as motors is essential to a
plant or factory’s production. Without maintenance, production
costs rise due to replacement of failed machinery and
downtime resulting from the broken machinery. Maintenance
can be done on a set time schedule which eliminates losses due
to unplanned down-time, but production costs are still high due
to the replacement of machinery that are still healthy [1].
Maintenance can also be done based on knowledge of the
machine’s health or condition. The machine’s health can be
observed by the severity of the vibration levels [1]. The
motor’s condition can be monitored either continuously (using
a permanently fixed vibration sensor) or on a schedule (using a
hand-held vibration monitor) [2]. The first option is data
intensive while the second requires a technician to make
regular field visits for inspection. The fault types which can be
measured are numerous and originate from both electrical and
mechanical failures [3], [4]. Not all of these fault types are
present on a piece of equipment or have the same level of
importance, making the design of an analysis system difficult.
Techniques which identify bearing failure differ to those
which determine rotor electrical faults [3]. While the
techniques used to identify various faults may vary [5], a
general rule is that if the overall vibrations increase, a fault is
present. The ISO-10816 classifies general vibrations according
to a severity level for machines of various sizes [6]. This ISO
does not say what the fault is, but does say whether the
vibrations present are good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory or
unacceptable. Condition based maintenance has been in use for
over 30 years [1] and as such, it has well established research
behind it and mature designs for industrial implementations.
Recent developments in research and industry has brought
wireless networking and machine learning (ML) to the machine
condition monitoring field. The first advance - wireless
networking - allows monitoring sensor nodes to be easily
integrated into devices [7] for industrial and consumer
l-))) 
applications [8, 9, 10]. It also reduces complex infrastructure
issues related to cabling in older monitoring technologies. The
sensor node transmits measured vibration data to the host
system where all the data processing takes place. The second
advance - machine learning - is still in development [3]. The
addition of wireless network technology has already been
implemented in the field of condition monitoring. One of the
primary wireless communication standards is the
WirelessHART standard which is used by companies such as
ABB, Emerson and Siemens [11]. This standard is based on the
IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer.
However, more recently, 6LoWPAN has been released and
has the benefit of complying to the IPv6 protocol [12].
6LoWPAN is a network layer protocol that makes it possible to
communicate with the nodes via the Internet Protocol (IP). This
paper aims at integrating ML and wireless technology into a
single device for monitoring the condition of motors. This
work aims at implementing a ML algorithm on the wireless
node itself to allow the wireless node to autonomously
determine the motor’s condition. This will allow the node to
transmit the present condition of the motor it is currently
attached to, instead of transmitting the raw vibration or electric
current measurements to a central control unit for analysis. The
advantage of such a system is reduction of wireless
transmissions.
II. BACKGROUND
A. Condition monitoring
Machine condition monitoring is an essential part to any
industry which is either directly or indirectly dependent on
machines. One result of failing machines is that an industrial
process needs to stop operations until the machine is fixed or
replaced. This is often unscheduled and increases production
costs. Machine failures can hardly be avoided, but maintenance
can be scheduled and result in more cost effective production.
Scheduled maintenance, or predictive maintenance, still has the
disadvantage of often replacing machines which could still run
for several years [1]. This can be avoided by actually
monitoring the condition of each machine, hence the name
“condition-based maintenance”. Faults can broadly be
categorized as electrical, mechanical or magnetic. This
categorization is due to excessive mechanical, electrical,
thermal, or magnetic stresses in the machines which cause
degradation of materials and parts breaking [13].
B. Use of machine learning in condition monitoring
Recent developments in research and industry has brought
ML to the machine condition monitoring field [3]. Much
research has been done and is being done to identify the best
ML algorithms to detect failures as well as identify (diagnose)
the specific failure. According to [14], specific issues related to
rotating equipment, require novel methods for blind source
separation, novelty detection and dynamic pattern recognition.
Generally, ML techniques have not yet been practically
implemented in the field of condition monitoring. The work
currently being done is primarily research. This research is
focused on identifying which algorithms and data features are
best to be used for condition monitoring. A challenge in the
field of condition monitoring is the lack of large datasets and
the absence of fault classes (not all faults have been classified)
[14]. There are real advantages in the implementation of ML
over conventional condition monitoring [14]. Conventional
monitoring requires many heuristics for the machine’s
structural properties, as well as identifying specific frequencies
in the vibration spectrum related to specific faults. These are
then used to set up a fault-database for the specific machine, so
for a new machine a new fault-database would need to be set
up. ML allows the system to train itself on what is normal for
any particular machine and consequently detect anomalies.
These anomalies can then indicate failures – combined with
heuristics similar to conventional condition monitoring,
specific faults can be diagnosed.
Two of the primary machine learning classes, supervised
and unsupervised learning, are used in condition monitoring.
Both ML classes require input features. These features are
extracted from the raw vibration and electrical current data.
Fig. 1 shows the feature extraction process.
Fig. 1. Feature extraction process.
Supervised learning requires labelled outputs for the ML
algorithm, while unsupervised learning needs to learn its own
output labels. A label can easily be given for the healthy
condition of the system, while labels for the faults are more
difficult to give, due to a lack of data, as already discussed.
Another limitation with using a supervised learning approach is
that it will only detect expected (i.e. labelled) faults. A new
unclassified fault would result in a false positive. The input of a
ML algorithm requires well chosen features to be extracted
from the raw data. Common feature extraction methods are
those based on temporal correlations [14], those based on
Discrete Wavelet Transforms [15] and those using the
frequency domain of the original time based data [16]. These
features are then fed into a Neural Network (NN), Self-
Organizing Map (SOM), k-means clustering or some other ML
method.
III. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
Fig. 2 shows an overview of the proposed system. FU 1 is
the autonomous wireless machine condition monitor sensor

which is attached to the vibrating motor. FU 2, the gateway,
interfaces the wireless sensor network protocol to a standard
computer protocol - such as USB or IPv6. FU 3 is a computer
running an application to display the motor’s condition. FU 1
is shown in greater detail in Fig. 3.
FU 1.1 provides power for the entire wireless node. The
power supply must be battery powered. FU 1.2 monitors the
power used by the wireless node. This monitor tracks all the
power used by each electronic device on board the wireless
machine condition monitor sensor. It then calculates how
much battery life remains and provides a battery status of the
device.
Fig. 2. System overview.
The functional block diagram of the system is shown in
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Functional block diagram of wireless condition monitoring sensor.
FU 1.3 converts mechanical vibrations into an analogue
voltage signal or a digital signal for processing by the data
processor (FU 1.5). Typically, this is done by a transducer such
as an accelerometer. The accelerometer will measure vibrations
in 3 axes. This raw data is fed to FU 1.5 for processing. FU 1.4
measures the electrical current levels of the motor’s power
supply and converts them to an analogue voltage signal. This
voltage signal will be conditioned before being fed into the
microcontroller’s analogue to digital converter. This digital
data is processed by FU 1.5. FU 1.5 will first do some
preprocessing of the raw data. This processed data is then fed
into a ML algorithm. The ML algorithm is implemented on a
microcontroller.
When the device is installed, the machine learning
algorithm builds its own model of the motor’s normal vibration
and electrical characteristics. The algorithm then looks for any
anomalies in new measurements received from FU 1.3 and FU
1.4. These anomalies, along with the battery status, are
transmitted to the gateway (FU 2) via FU 1.6. FU 1.6 provides
low power wireless communication to connect to the wireless
sensor network.
A. Wireless sensor node
Vibration measurements were conducted with a LSM6DS3
accelerometer connected to a Nucleo-L152RE evaulation kit
with a 32-bit STM32L152RET6 microcontroller (MCU) via
I2C. The wireless link was implemented with a X-Nucleo-
IDS01A4 expansion board that was connected to the Nucleo-
L152RE kit. This board has a transceiver that communicates at
sub-GHz frequencies, which enable greater communication
ranges than 2.4 GHz. The sensor node runs ContikiOS. Details
on the current and voltage requirements for the main
components comprising the wireless sensor node are shown in
Table I. The specific connectivity method is not important, and
it could be any wireless technology deemed suitable for the
environment [17, 18, 19].
Table I. Current and voltage requirements.
Function Description Max current
[mA]
2) Protocol
The experimental protocol is as follows:
• Place a faulty bearing onto the motor.
• Set the speed of the motor.
• Place the accelerometer on the x-axis.
• Start the QuantumX’s data logger.
• Start the motor.
• Let the motor run at operating speed.
• Switch power off to stop the motor.
• Stop the data logger.
Voltage • Repeat for y-axis and z-axis.
range [V]

Radio link X-Nucleo-IDS01A4 22 1.8 – 3.6

Microcontroller STM32L152RET6 131.82 1.65 – 3.6
Accelerometer LSM6DS3 1.25 1.71 – 3.6
System total 155.25 1.8 – 3.6

B. Accelerometer connection to the MCU

The placement of the accelerometor on the machine is
important due to electromagnetic interference (EMI). Ideally,
the I2C communication protocol is used on printed circuit
boards (PCBs) and not over long (greater than 1 meter) wired
channels. This can lead to failure when the accelerometer is
connected to the MCU with a meter long unshielded cable as
these channels can be very susceptible to the EMI generated by Fig. 4. Taper bearing faulty sleeve setup.
a motor. The EMI interference was mitigated by shielding the
I2C channel with a shielded cable.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL PROTOCOL
Three tests were conducted to evaluate the implemented
system, as described below.
A. Motor bearing data
The objective of this experiment is to acquire test data for a
faulty bearing and a normal condition bearing using calibrated
equipment. This data will be used to validate the data from the
designed system.
1) Equipment
The following equipment was used: a QuantumX data
acquisition system; a Marpol 3 phase motor with a jig to allow
the outer ring of the shaft bearing to be replaced; and a motor
(taper) bearing from SKF (4T-320/32X).
Fig. 4 shows the setup of the motor and the accelerometer.
The accelerometer is setup to measure vibrations in the z-axis Fig. 5. Taper bearing faulty sleeve.
(axial direction) in Fig. 4. The taper bearing is inside the silver
B. Shaft bearing data
casing. The casing can be removed to expose the bearing and
replace the outer ring sleeve. The QuantumX data acquisition The objective of this experiment is to verify the
system is set to sample at 2.4 kHz. The Taper bearing’s faulty functionality of the designed sensor node. This will be done on
outer ring sleeve’s fault is a groove drilled across its width as the shaft setup. The designed sensor node’s output will be
shown in Fig. 5. The motor was set to 53 Hz with a rotational compared to that of the data received by the QuantumX and
speed measured at 1587 rpm. industrial accelerometer.


 1) Equipment V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The following equipment was used: an accelerometer; a
A. Motor bearing data
QuantumX data acquisition system; LSM6DS3 accelerometer;
Unicleo-GUI software for LSM6DS3 data acquisition; VSD Fig. 6 shows the time and frequency domains for the
controlled with a potentiometer; and a shaft motor setup. The bearing under normal conditions. The peak magnitude is at
QuantumX data acquisition system is set to sample at 2.4 kHz. 26.45 Hz as expected for the motor running at 1587 rpm (rpm
The shaft is first set aligned, then misaligned. The motor is set = Hz ɯ 60s). Fig. 7 shows the time and frequency domains for
to 50 Hz with a rotational speed measured at 1573 rpm. The the bearing with a faulty outer bearing ring. A spike in the
designed sensor node is sending data from the accelerometer to spectrum occurs at 26.45 Hz but a new spike also occurs at 212
the MCU via a I2 channel of approximately 10 cm. The Hz. This is 8 times the rotational speed of the motor. The 846
designed sensor node’s sampling rate is 6.660 kHz. Hz frequency component also increased significantly. A quick
look at the time domain plots also shows that there is a
2) Protocol significant increase of vibrations in the higher frequency range.
The experimental protocol is as follows: Fig. 6 shows a clear waveform corresponding to the 26.45 Hz,
while in Fig. 7 there are no discernible patterns.
• Align the shaft.
• Place the accelerometer on the bearing.
• Start the data logger.
• Speed up the motor to 50 Hz.
• Let the motor run at operating speed.
• Switch power off to stop the motor.
• Stop the data logger.
C. Fault diagnosis
The objective of this experiment was to train the machine
learning algorithm on real vibration data and then observe its
prediction accuracy.
1) Equipment Fig. 6. Vibration of normal bearing.
An accelerometer, a QuantumX data acquisition systemand
a shaft/bearing test bench were used. The QuantumX data
acquisition system is set to sample at 2.4 kHz. The shaft is first
set aligned, then unbalanced, then a bearing bolt is loosened,
then the shaft is misaligned. The motor is set to 50 Hz with a
rotational speed measured at 1573 rpm.
2) Protocol
After all the data has been gathered, it is fed to the Python
script to pre-process the data and then the data is fed to the ML
algorithm for training. The training is done on the first 3
seconds of each data set. The training process splits 33 % of the
data into a test set and the rest into a training set. The steps to
collect the training data are as follows:
• Set shaft condition (aligned/unbalanced).
• Place the accelerometer on the bearing.
Fig. 7. Vibration of faulty bearing.
• Speed up the motor to 50 Hz.
• Let the motor run at operating speed. The spike at 26.45 Hz is expected given that the motor is
• Start the data logger. rotating at 1587 rpm. The spike at 846 Hz is also expected
because the bearing used has 32 rollers. 846 Hz is 32 times the
• Run the logger for more than 5 seconds. running frequency of 26.45 Hz. This is the benchmark data
• Stop data logger. which is defined as normal for the ML subsystem. Any
deviation from these results would indicate a possible pending
• Train the machine learning model. fault. In Fig. 7, the frequency component at 846 Hz is larger
than for normal operation and a very strong frequency
Then, validation data is collected, use the model to predict the component at 8 times the operating frequency is also seen.
fault.


Both of these are ‘anomalies’ to normal operation. This
indicates that the frequency domain data would be a good
feature.
B. Shaft bearing data
Fig. 8 shows the reference time and frequency domains for
the aligned shaft as measured by the industrial accelerometer.
These results show show that the neural network machine
learning approach can work well to identify faults. This
experiment only shows the neural network identifying a single
fault. The largest drawback is that the implemented neural
network is highly supervised.

Fig. 10. FFT for a normal and misaligned shaft.

Fig. 8. Vibration of aligned shaft.

Fig. 9 shows the frequency domain for the aligned shaft as

measured by the designed sensor node.

Fig. 11. FFT for a normal and unbalanced shaft.

Fig. 9. Vibration data of aligned shaft measured by the proposed system.

Table II. Neural network prediction results.
C. Fault diagnosis Actual condition Predicted condition Confidence
level of
Fig. 10 shows the FFT features of the normal vibration data prediction
along with the vibration data of a misaligned shaft fault. The
misaligned shaft fault condition was not modelled in the NN. A Normal Normal 96%
visual inspection shows how the frequency spectrum changes Normal Normal 95%
when the shaft is unbalanced. Fig. 11 shows the FFT features Normal Normal 95%
of the validation data. A visual inspection shows how the Unbalanced Unbalanced 99%
frequency spectrum changes when the shaft is unbalanced. The Unbalanced Unbalanced 99%
neural network’s model prediction results are shown in Table Unbalanced Unbalanced 99%
Normal Normal 91%
II. The results in Table II show a 100% accuracy in identifying Normal Normal 84%
a fault from a normal condition. The confidence level in Normal Normal 81%
identifying a misaligned fault is 99% while the confidence Misaligned shaft Normal 83%
level for correctly identifying a normal condition is above 80 Misaligned shaft Normal 84%
%. A fault unknown to the trained model results in a false Misaligned shaft Normal 84%
classification of normal operation with confidence over 82%.


The NN was trained to identify a unbalanced shaft, which is
why is has such a high confidence level in identifying it as a
fault condition. This high confidence level is however a good
motivation to train model on the most common faults. When an
unknown fault is presented to the NN model, it fails to identify
the fault as not normal even though its FFT features are not at
all similar.
VI. CONCLUSION
A wireless vibration condition monitoring system was
implemented with a sub-GHz wireless network for data
transmission and a neural network for condition monitoring. A
sensor node was designed to pick up the vibration data of the
motor and transmit it to a PC application via a 6LoWPAN
based gateway. The vibration data was picked up by a MEMS
accelerometer, relayed to a MCU which handled the CoAP and
6LoWPAN protocols for the wireless network. Relaying the
data from the accelerometer to the MCU was done via an I2C
channel. This channel was very susceptible to the EMI
generated by the motor. The EMI interference was negated by
shielding the I2C channel with a shielded cable. For future
work, more features and more machine learning algorithms
will be considered and also looking at alternative WSN
methods for additional services, like localisation of machines
[20, 21]. For future work, more advanced machine learning
techniques and more features will be investigated.
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