Configurable monitor and parts management system

Abstract

A monitoring and maintenance system that utilizes imperial and theoretical data to compare parts, vehicles, users, regions, wear intensity indexes over time and tracking information to provide a sophisticated data collection system for heavy-duty equipment or rental equipment. This tracking is designed to better the specifications, designs, training, preventative maintenance, and replacement wear understanding of fleet management.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]Some embodiments of the present invention relate to heavy duty equipment. The costs to operate and maintain heavy duty equipment can be expensive. Further, downtime of heavy duty equipment can be a key factor in the costs associated with heavy equipment. Maintaining well-organized and well-oiled equipment can help ensure safety and keep costs at a reasonable level.[0002]Tracking hours of use of heavy equipment and where heavy equipment travels during use can provide assistance in service and maintenance of heavy equipment—it can also help reduce the costs, for example the cost per ton of mining can be lowered in some situations.[0003]Although advanced GPS tracking and telematics monitoring has been installed on many pieces of heavy duty equipment, these units are expensive, difficult to install, and difficult to use.[0004]Further, these systems do not enable tracking of work tools that are used in connection with heavy duty equipment. For example, th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a system that can monitor and track work tools that are attached to a heavy-duty vehicle. The system uses sensors and a network of vehicles and devices to detect which work tools are installed and if they are properly installed. The system can also communicate with other devices and users through Bluetooth and social mesh protocols. Overall, the system improves safety and efficiency by ensuring the proper use of work tools and reducing the risk of accidents.

Problems solved by technology

The costs to operate and maintain heavy duty equipment can be expensive.

Further, downtime of heavy duty equipment can be a key factor in the costs associated with heavy equipment.

Although advanced GPS tracking and telematics monitoring has been installed on many pieces of heavy duty equipment, these units are expensive, difficult to install, and difficult to use.

Further, these systems do not enable tracking of work tools that are used in connection with heavy duty equipment.

These work tools can be easily misplaced on a job site or a dealer lot.

Although some heavy duty equipment have engine control modules or other systems for interfacing with a telematics or monitoring system, a large portion of the heavy duty equipment market does not have such an integrated system.

Typically this is only for the more expensive devices, as the cost was high.

The problem with some of the past solutions was that they exposed connections and required connections or specific alignment.

This exposure to failure makes this a less than favorable solution and requires specific proximity.

The key problem is to have a physical entity that moves and informing associations through that movement and a communications link.

One problem is how IOT devices can recognize machine and social interactions that are possible within this ecosystem.

One problem with this approach is that there is a greater ecosystem of communications available for these devices and for these users.

Another issue with known IOT devices is that within a network only specific interconnection or network uplinks are allowed and these are preprogrammed from identification and user configured.

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