Industrial IoT Monitoring Dashboards with ThingsBoard
Custom ThingsBoard dashboards for device telemetry, industrial sensor measurements, equipment status, operational trends and alerts.
Project status: In development
Many mines still run on radio calls, shift reports and spot measurements. A crusher bearing fails without warning, the dispatcher estimates where trucks are, and air quality in a drift is checked by hand at intervals. Smart mining replaces these blind spots with continuous data from machines, vehicles and the underground environment, delivered to the people who need to act on it.
My background combines more than a decade of IT and network infrastructure work, including in the mining sector, with Master's studies in IoT Engineering. I support mining operations as an individual consultant and engineer: assessing the site, designing the architecture and guiding implementation from the first sensor to the control-room dashboard.
Industry challenges
Connectivity that moves with the mine
Rock attenuates radio signals, and the network has to follow advancing faces, benches and haul roads rather than stay in one place.
Unplanned stops of critical assets
A failed conveyor drive, crusher or dewatering pump can halt the entire value chain, yet early symptoms usually go unrecorded.
Worker safety underground
Hazardous gases, heavy mobile equipment and uncertainty about who is where make emergency response far harder than it should be.
Vendor data silos
Each OEM brings its own telematics portal, so information about one operation ends up scattered across incompatible systems.
Harsh operating conditions
Dust, moisture, vibration and temperature swings shorten the life of sensors and radios unless hardware is chosen and mounted carefully.
Technical solutions
Equipment condition monitoring
Vibration, temperature and motor-current sensing on drives, gearboxes, pumps and crushers to spot degradation early.
Haul truck and fleet telemetry
Position, load and dump events, engine hours and machine status collected to make the haulage cycle transparent.
Proximity and collision-warning concepts
Designs using UWB, BLE or GNSS that alert operators and pedestrians to nearby vehicles, as an additional layer alongside existing safety rules.
Underground positioning and smart PPE
Zone-based personnel tracking, connected cap lamps or tags, and portable gas detectors that report alarms to both the wearer and the control room.
Ventilation and environmental monitoring
Continuous measurement of gases, temperature, humidity, dust and airflow to support ventilation decisions.
Mine network and control-room dashboards
A layered design of fiber, industrial Wi-Fi or mesh and LPWAN, with data consolidated in ThingsBoard dashboards.
How a smart mining engagement is structured
Assumptions made in an office rarely survive the first week underground. That is why I work in short, verifiable steps:
- Site assessment: understand extraction, haulage and processing, list critical assets, review the existing network and map coverage gaps.
- Use-case definition: select two or three problems with the highest operational or safety impact and define what data is needed, how often, and for whom.
- Architecture design: choose sensors, edge gateways, connectivity and the data platform, favoring open standards such as MQTT over proprietary lock-in.
- Field pilot: instrument one asset or one area, then measure link quality, hardware durability and how useful the dashboard is for operators.
- Rollout and operation: expand in stages, define alarm ownership and escalation, document the system and transfer know-how to the mine's own technical staff.
Connectivity: the foundation of every smart mine
A sensor without a reliable link is just an expensive ornament. In mine network design I usually separate four layers:
| Layer | Typical technology | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Backbone | Fiber, point-to-point radio | Link control room, workshops and portals |
| High-bandwidth access | Industrial Wi-Fi, mesh | Mobile equipment and data-heavy assets |
| Low-power access | LoRaWAN or similar LPWAN | Battery-powered environmental sensors |
| Edge | Industrial gateways | Buffer data during outages, local logic |
The design is network-neutral: whether a site uses its own gateways or an external provider is decided per project. For background, see What is smart mining? and MQTT in industrial IoT.
From raw signals to control-room decisions
The end goal is a dashboard where a shift supervisor can see within seconds what needs attention. That means:
- alarms ranked by severity rather than a flood of identical notifications,
- separate views for operations, maintenance, safety and management,
- historical data kept for root-cause analysis and planning.
Equally important is what happens after go-live. Sensors drift, batteries run down and the mine layout changes every month. I therefore define, together with the site team, who checks device health, how new working areas are added to the network and how alarm thresholds are reviewed. A system that nobody maintains quietly loses the trust of its users, and with it its value.
Frequently asked questions
Does smart mining mean replacing existing machinery?
Rarely. Most solutions add sensors and gateways to equipment already in service and read data from existing controllers. Replacement only makes sense where retrofitting is technically or economically unreasonable.
How is data transmitted underground without cellular coverage?
Typically through a fiber backbone, wireless or mesh access points in the drifts, and a low-power network for battery sensors. The right mix depends on mine geometry, development plans and existing infrastructure.
Where should a mine start?
With one specific, costly problem, such as monitoring a primary crusher or a main conveyor. A small pilot shows how network, sensors and dashboard behave under real site conditions before larger investments.
Can these systems replace certified safety equipment?
No. Smart systems add information and analysis on top of certified safety equipment and established procedures; they do not substitute for them.
