Monitor More Assets with Fewer Devices

In this session, Ben Johnson explores how operators use the module to monitor more assets, additional negatives, and complex junction boxes from a single RM510 remote monitor.

If you’re looking for ways to collect more data without deploying additional remote monitoring units, this session is worth a look.

Don’t forget to register for future Virtual Brews!

Speakers

Ed Kruft, CEO
Ben Johnson, Product Manager, Bullhorn
Erick Flores, Product Owner, Bullhorn

Transcript

Opening Remarks

Ed Kruft
Good morning, everybody. My name is Ed Kruft. I’m really pleased that you’ve joined us — we’ve got a great turnout. I think we’ve got a good virtual brew set up for you. I’ll only take about two minutes of your time, and then we’ll turn it over to Ben Johnson, our product manager for Bullhorn, and Erick Flores, who is the product owner for Bullhorn. You may recognize him from a virtual brew he did earlier.

We’ll jump right in. I think you all know at this point that we love questions in the chat, and we try to address them as they come up. If we can’t, we’ll try very hard to get back in touch with you and make sure we answer any questions or comments you have. We like both.

With that, let’s jump to the next slide, Ben.

This chart is a lot fuller at the beginning of the year, because it seems like our industry likes to jam as many events as possible into January and February. It slows down a bit in the summer, but we haven’t been to the American Water Works Association show in a very long time, so we’re excited to get back to that. We’ve had water customers for a number of years, and we’re seeing growing interest in that area — Ben’s going to attend that one. We’re also going to the OU Short Course in June, the Louisiana Gas Show in August, and the annual clay shoot in Houston.

We’ve also posted our official dates for AI World in November, and I believe people can sign up now. If you head to the next slide, Ben —

It should be an exciting AI World. We’re using a new venue this year. For those of you who’ve been coming for many years, we’re moving closer to downtown — the hotel is the Omni, on 7th or 8th Street, right in the heart of downtown. We toured the venue and think it’s going to be a great space — we’ll be able to spend a lot of time together during meals, breaks, and sessions. Please register — it’s the first week in November.

Thanks, Connie, for putting the link in the chat.

So I think we’re ready to dive in, right, Ben?

Ben Johnson
Worth noting about Juneteenth?

Ed Kruft
Oh, yep, sorry — one of our software architects, Jared Vick, did an interview and presentation with MP World around the use of artificial intelligence in cathodic protection. It’s in the latest issue, and you can scan the QR code — it’s also available online. He’s been a real thought leader for us in that space, both in how we use AI inside the company and how we’re integrating it into our future solutions.

And finally, a reminder that our offices are closed tomorrow in honor of Juneteenth. We hope you all take the opportunity to think about Juneteenth, and our team members will too.

Ben Johnson: Data Correlation & the IO16

Ben Johnson
All right, thanks for that, Ed.

As Ed said, my name is Ben Johnson. I’m a relatively new product manager for the Bullhorn product line — quick background on me: I’m in my 11th year of my career, and my background is in applications engineering and deploying embedded systems to remote locations. Naturally, when I saw this opportunity, I jumped on it, because American Innovations does great work protecting America’s infrastructure.

Two months ago, when Erick presented on the Bullhorn FieldPro app, I was a month into the job. I’ve now had three months to get my feet wet and understand the current opportunities within cathodic protection. So I wanted to use this time to share where I see the current state of data and data analytics, and how you can leverage some of our new offerings — as well as how we can work together to be more proactive and predictive about how we deploy technicians and resources in the field.

I want to give an overview of best practices for data correlation. I’ll walk through some examples from cathodic protection, and also from my SCADA experience. For anyone who doesn’t know, SCADA is supervisory control and data acquisition — similar to monitoring a rectifier, it’s about monitoring large, high-value assets in the field and making sure preventative and predictive maintenance can be taken advantage of to reduce costs.

Then we’ll go through three use cases the new Bullhorn IO16 is meant to address.

Before we dive in — Nita, let’s pull up the poll. I want to get a rough feel for how many of your facilities or assets have the potential to capture more than the traditional two measurements — DCMS and DC volts. So: one more, two more, three to five, or five-plus that you feel you could capture, if you had more test points in an area, or just some extra wire or a couple of extra channels.

All right — greater than five, that’s interesting. Not usually, okay. It’s looking like a majority of people do have opportunities to capture more data in the field if they just had access.

So, when it comes to data correlation analysis — if we focus on corrosion protection, the dynamics of the industry make it very difficult to predict where you’re going to see corrosion. This is a typical problem in the industry when trying to be more predictive. There are two approaches. One is identifying potential correlation data you can leverage. The one I think about most for corrosion is meteorology data — how weather and seasons affect the amount of power used at rectifiers over time, and how precipitation rates and humidity affect soil resistivity.

I don’t think anyone’s confident enough to identify one of those as the true bellwether of a potential asset failure — and that’s typical. It’s like predicting the weather: the old anecdote is that an older person whose “bones are aching” thinks it means rain is coming. Maybe that’s because they have a titanium hip, and low pressure entering the area causes something to happen — it’s a bit hand-wavy, but eventually people build up enough intuition over time to see those bellwethers in the data and say, “That needs to be looked at,” or “Yes, that means rain is coming.”

So what we want to do is set up long-term studies within our fleets to start identifying these bellwether indicators. Imagine deploying a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor with each of your RM510s, across a fleet of hundreds or thousands of RMUs. Over a one-, two-, or three-year period, you can correlate that data with field tech investigations and your AC/DC potential gradient measurements, and start building predictive analytics into your prioritization and scheduling.

It is a time investment — you need those data lakes available so you can ask the big, high-value questions and start getting insight. But over time, you’ll get more accurate, and be able to be more proactive about where you need to deploy field techs or additional resources, test points, or RMUs.

With asset monitoring — more in the SCADA sense — this is where you typically have a clear cause and effect for when large machinery is going to fail. At a production facility, for example, you might have large machinery with spinning fans that wear out over time and can cause critical failures if you don’t monitor their health. That’s just one example — there’s also flow rates. If things stop flowing, or signals stop being published, you know you need to get out to the asset to monitor its health or perform maintenance.

For the cathodic protection example — imagine correlating the temperature data at the rectifier with the general temperature and weather data in the region, across all the regions where you have assets deployed. Over time, you might see that specific data points within a region are more affected by, say, a large precipitation season in the spring, or that one area is more susceptible to summer heat than another. This is where you need those long-term data points available to do the analysis.

And for asset monitoring and heavy machinery, you typically set up triggers that alert your technicians when maintenance is needed, instead of relying on a regularly scheduled inspection. You save across your entire fleet by letting the asset tell you when it needs attention, rather than checking on it regularly, which can be very costly for teams to do.

So again, there are three use cases we’ve targeted with the new IO16, which I’ll get to in a couple of slides. I want to make sure I focus on where we’re trying to help you be more predictive and preventative in how you monitor your assets.

IO16: do more with less. Expanding from four to 16 channels means you can either monitor more rectifiers with a single RMU, set up bellwether monitoring tests for long-term fleet analysis and insight, or — for research and development — choose an array of different sensors to test and see how they correlate to the behavior of your assets, to find low-cost, high-value opportunities for your fleet.

This is the IO16, which we released in May. It transforms the RM510 rectifier monitor from four analog channels to 16 channels, so you can monitor multiple assets or deploy multiple types of sensors with your RM510s. It’s an easy way to increase your footprint of channels per RMU, and the specifications of the IO16 match the IO4’s specifications.

With that, I’ll toss it over to Erick, who just jumped on to show you the experience in the app. Erick, if you’re ready —

You’ve got a question in the chat. When you talk about temperature and humidity sensors, I assume you’re talking about atmospheric temp and humidity — what about soil temp and moisture?

Ben Johnson
Yeah — why not both? With 16 channels available, you’re not limited to atmospheric temp and humidity; you could add soil temp and a moisture sensor in the ground too. Taking all four of those data points, you could see how long moisture sticks around in the soil before it evaporates, versus how fast it clears above ground. A traditional weather data center gives you the actual air quality and moisture data, but it wouldn’t necessarily tell you how soil moisture is changing over time. Good question — I’d want more data to be able to answer it fully. Good question, Jeffrey.

Erick Flores: Live Demo — Enabling the IO16 in Bullhorn FieldPro

Erick Flores
All right — I’ll go ahead and get started here. Good morning, everyone. Let me share my screen. I’m going to walk through enabling the IO16 through Bullhorn FieldPro, and what that looks like. Afterward, we’ll go over to Bullhorn and look at the output once it’s transformed. Give me one second.

Ed Kruft
Hey, Erick — I don’t see anything on your screen. Are you sharing?

Erick Flores
Oh — let me try that again. Thank you. How’s that, better? … Yeah, it’s loading up now. Okay, cool.

All right, I’ve opened the Bullhorn FieldPro app. I’m going to the BLE Tools section. I have my RM510C here — I have a development version, so you’ll see a few more units listed than usual, but the unit at the bottom is the RM510C.

I’m going to connect to it. Many of you are probably familiar with the process of connecting to your RM5 and configuring your units, so I won’t go through that in detail. In order for the IO16 to be compatible with your RM5, you need the latest firmware — you’ll be prompted to update if you’re not on the latest when you connect. The firmware we’re looking at is 14.58, which is what allows the unit to be compatible with the IO16. I’m already on that.

Once you have that, when you go to your channel settings, you’ll see a new option appear at the top: “IO16 Enabled.” This toggle starts the process of connecting your IO16 and IO4 together so they can communicate and you can start monitoring across multiple channels.

(Fixing a wiring issue.) I’m going to go ahead and tap that. You’ll be prompted, “Did you install your IO16?” — yes, I have. You’ll get a bit more detail on what happens: once you go to Bullhorn, instead of the four channels you may currently see, you’ll now have the ability to configure up to 16 channels, with data coming across all 16.

One important thing that happens when you enable IO16: your digital channels are no longer accessible. That’s because the digital channels are used for the connection between the IO4 and the IO16 — that wiring is essential for getting correct reads from the correct channels, so it’s not a step that should be skipped. If you’re using digital channels for some reason but also need the 16 channels, you’ll have to give those up in that scenario.

I’ve gone ahead and enabled it here — now I have 16 channels showing. (Sync in progress.) I’ve got an IO status indicator here, and it’s telling me my digital wiring isn’t looking good — I most likely have one of the digital connections not wired correctly between the IO4 and IO16. That’s an indication to check your wiring. In the interest of time, I won’t go through that now since we only have a few minutes.

Now, let’s say I want to look at channel 10 — I’ll enable that, and label it “practice.” So now I have channels 1, 2, 3, 4, and channel 10 DC enabled. If I go to Readings, it’s loading up all the channels. I can see some readings here — because of that wiring issue, I’m not seeing the voltage I’d expect. From here, I’d go back and validate that I followed the setup guide and wired everything correctly.

That’s really all it takes, from the software side, to enable it. Now I’ll jump over to Bullhorn to show what it looks like once it’s enabled, and how the channels come across when you’re looking at a specific unit. I need to switch screens — stopping share and reshare now.

Ben Johnson
While Erick pulls that up — just so you all know, the Bullhorn RM510 is running some checks on its connection to the IO16. You’re seeing that because, when Erick and I were setting this up this morning, we missed one of the digital connections, and it’s alerting us — which is a value-add in the field, letting you know when something’s wrong and specifically what might be wrong.
And as Erick mentioned, once you set up the IO16 on-site, there’s some back-end syncing that happens. When you flip the toggle to switch to IO16, it starts communicating with Bullhorn Web to set up the back end, so your techs in the field can start setting up channels while Bullhorn is simultaneously preparing to receive that additional data.

Erick, back to you.

Erick Flores
Okay — are you able to see Bullhorn right now?

Ben Johnson
Yep, yeah.

Erick Flores
Okay, cool. So this unit here was enabled for all the channels — we turned on all 16 for this unit. Once you’ve enabled data collection across all 16 channels, you can see all the values coming in through Bullhorn and displaying on the graphs here.
This also carries over to the All Units screen — all the additional columns will show up there too, if you want to create a view specific to your IO16 units, with multiple columns since you’re tracking more than the traditional two channels for these assets.

That’s what I wanted to cover today. I’ll kick it back over to Ben. Ben, I think we’re back to you.

Closing & Q&A

Ben Johnson
Yeah — making sure everything’s working. Looks like it is. All right, thanks for that, Erick. You should be seeing my screen now.
Also — Erick was feeling under the weather and still made it on-site to do that demo for you all. Give it up for Erick.

If you’d like, drop a note in chat about what additional data points you’re thinking about when it comes to the IO16 and deploying more channels in the field — we’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

We’re trying to help you all get as much data as you need and want, so you can better deploy resources and optimize your teams. As corridors and test points get more complex, we have to be smarter about how we work and how we enable our teams. American Innovations is trying to meet you where you are, and the IO16 is meant to help with that.

To be more productive, you need more data — more insight to correlate and analyze indicating factors, so we can better prioritize how we spend our time. More data means more channels, and we’re hoping the IO16 makes that a less costly venture. Before now, you would have had to deploy a whole new RMU — hopefully we’re making that easier now.

Download the new Bullhorn FieldPro app — we have an update coming at the end of this month with additional new features. It’s still living alongside Bullhorn Tools, so for those of you who are apprehensive about switching to something new, we’ll continue supporting Bullhorn Tools for the time being. I’ll update you when we have line of sight on sunsetting it, but that’s TBD. We’re trying to make the transition to the new app as easy and seamless as possible.

With that, I’ll stick around for questions and hopefully some answers. Ed, Erick — any final thoughts? Otherwise, I’ll monitor chat for the next couple of minutes.

Ed Kruft
Nope — just thank you, Erick, thank you, Ben, and most importantly, thank you to everybody who joined. Have a good rest of your day.

Ben Johnson
Good question, Kevin — the voltage specs and ranges are posted online on our support page. They’re the same specs as the IO4: plus or minus 200 volts. Correct me if I’m wrong, Erick.

Erick Flores
I’ll grab the data sheet and send it to you.

Ben Johnson
Yeah, go ahead and post the data sheet while you’re at it. But yes, Kevin, that’s up online and available, and it’s the same as the IO4.

Erick Flores
Yeah, it’s 150, plus or minus.

Ben Johnson
150 — thank you. I’ll also post my email in chat, in case any of you have questions or want to talk about data analytics or correlation ideas. I’m happy to take a 30-minute meeting to walk through what I’ve seen and hear any ideas you’d like to try. Feel free to email me — I’ll connect you with the right resources if I’m not the right person.

I’m not seeing any other questions, so I think we can go ahead and close it out. Thank you again, everybody — appreciate your time, and we’ll see you next month.