Low cost MEMS accelerometer and microphone based condition monitoring sensor, with LoRa and Bluetooth Low Energy radio

Abstract

Vibration-based Condition Monitoring (CM) is an essential tool for identifying potential defects in industrial machinery. However, the implementation of an efficient CM system often necessitates the use of high-cost accelerometers with a large bandwidth. To address this challenge, this study introduces a low-cost CM sensor composed of an ultrasonic MEMS microphone - SPH0641LU and an ADXL1002 MEMS accelerometer. The combination of these two sensor types allows for comparative analysis of the captured data. The SPH641LU microphone is capable of detecting audible vibration signals with a frequency range up to 80 kHz, while the ADXL1002 accelerometer can measure vibrations up to 21 kHz. In addition a three axis ultra low power accelerometer is included, allowing measurement of unbalance or rotating speed, below 200Hz. Moreover, the sensor is designed to operate on battery power and provides the capability for raw data transmission via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or the transmission of pre-processed features from the raw data using LoRaWAN.