An IoT System for Real-Time Monitoring of DC Motor Overload

Abstract

The excavators are heavy machines widely used in the civil engineering and surface mining industry. Recent studies show that 95% of contractors face the problem of finding skilled operators. Unskilled operators not only worsen productivity but also very often cause machine failures through unprofessional handling. Motivated by these studies and guided by the mining company’s requirements, we present a prototype of an IoT system for monitoring DC motor overload on the EKG-15 excavator. The IoT system consists of a microprocessor device mounted inside the excavator and an external cloud platform that can be accessed via the Internet. The proposed solution detects and warns the operator when the DC motor overload occurs, thus reducing the probability of its damage. In addition, overload data is sent to the cloud platform for later research, analysis and processing. The main benefit of the proposed solution is that it can be applied to existing industry machinery, thus reducing the maintenance cost and increasing productivity. After several months of use of the proposed system in real working conditions, it has been shown that the overload occurrence and its duration time are approximately reduced by 60% and 80%, respectively.