[shireboy]

Maybe dumb question: One of the use cases is instrument reading of analog instruments. My brain immediately goes to "this should have some sensor sending data, and not be analog". Is having a robot dog read analog sensors really a better fit in some cases?

[heisenzombie]

It bears really thinking through the alternative:

So we're going to have some engineers specify suitable digital replacements given the process/environment/safety requirements. We'll procure those (noting that an industrial digital pressure transducer can easily push up towards $10k), schedule a plant shutdown (how much does that cost?), then pay a pipefitter/boilermaker to replace the old gauges with new pressure transmitters (do you need a hot work permit for that? Did you get your engineer to sign that off?). Then, your controls sparky has to find a way to route a drop back to your marshalling cabinet for connection into your fieldbus/HART/modbus/whatever network (do you have one of those?) so that your SCADA system can talk to it (do you have one of those?).

Obviously it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison, but I think the costs involved with making "simple" changes in industrial settings are easy to wildly underestimate.

[fennecfoxy]

I think the thing is: does it need to last 20-30 years between replacements if a robot can easily replace it + they're cheap enough to add redundant ones. Do we really need crazy accuracy even on an industrial level...like this pipe will burst at 200psi so the gauge needs to be accurate to 0.001 psi so we can sound the alarm when it hits 199.999 psi somehow I don't think so.

Dumb silicon is so super cheap now, just look to nfc etc, 1c microcontrollers. We can litter our world with sensors.

Which I would love to see - but I'm also not discounting the usefulness of any robot just being able to read something we can read and vice versa.

[schainks]

I can see many cases where installing an IoT camera will be more reliable and less costly than, "shut down equipment to unplug this analog instrument, hook up a digital one, calibrate it, then restart the equipment".

If it ain't broke don't fix it — pointing a cheap camera at it with some cloud compute will suffice.

[Glemllksdf]

Having a IoT system working flawlessly across all devices you own, would be great right?

Like your washing machine reporting its state, knowing if sun is out, running only when there is a lot of sun.

Your bsement heater sending out its stats.

And your industry machine doing the same thing.

Then you realize that we are talking about industry 4.0 for a decade now, everything IoT is either closed source or always costs extra and working together? hahahaahha...

I don't know why we can't have nice things it would be that easy :|

[fennecfoxy]

Honestly? Because capitalism.