University of Huddersfield partners with manufacturing firm on £120k remote data collection project

Researchers at the University of Huddersfield are assisting a specialist manufacturing company harness new communications technology so that its products can grow in global markets.

Mainstream Measurements Ltd, the Addingham-based manufacturer, has exported its range of flowmeters throughout Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and Africa plus North and South America.

Now, the company has formed a £120k Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Huddersfield, in order to develop software and communication mechanisms that will allow the meters to be read remotely, as well as integrate into standardised industrial control systems, such as MODBUS.

The University’s Dr Simon Parkinson, an informatics lecturer who is the KTP’s academic supervisor, said: “Rather than someone having to physically go and read the data, they will be able to remain in the office and remotely acquire data, allowing the end-user to make better-informed and rapid decisions.”

Harnessing this new technology will be advantageous for companies involved in applications such as effluent monitoring, water distribution, industrial flow and water distribution, which need to monitor flow in order to deal with issues such as blockages, flood risks.

The advantages of remote reading would be even greater in some of the territories where Mainstream’s flowmeters are deployed, such as the remote areas of Australia.

Dr Parkinson explained that the challenge of the KTP, which is backed by the Government agency Innovate UK, is that there is no dominating data communication protocol in the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, and this is particularly true within the water industry.

Using a cellular infrastructure, such as 3G or 4G, would consume too much power, which is highly detrimental to devices running on battery power in remote areas.

The LoRaWAN communication protocol – a low power data transfer protocol for wide area networks – is being investigated by the KTP Associate, Sean Howson, who is now based at Mainstream.

He has BEng and MEng degrees in electronic engineering from the University of Huddersfield and during the two-year KTP he will work towards a Master’s by Research.

It is also expected that the KTP will help Mainstream boost its research and development capacity and add software engineering to its range of expertise.