Industrial IoT startup Petasense emerged from stealth today, officially announcing $1.8 million in seed funding and a hardware/software solution designed to help industrial customers understand when equipment needs maintenance by “listening” to its vibrations. As it turns out, machines vibrate at a certain frequency when they are operating smoothly, but as parts begin to wear down, the vibration sound changes in a way that can be measured. Petasense offers a vibration sensor for each machine, which feeds data about the vibrations wirelessly to the cloud, analyzes it, and presents it to users in a way that even employees who don’t have expertise in vibration science can understand. The funding, which dates back to 2015 according to Crunchbase, is officially being announced today. The round was led by True Ventures with Felicis Ventures and several angel investors also participating. Om Malik, who was founder of the tech blog GigaOm, is lead investor at True, and he liked what he saw in Petasense. “Just as we have core senses that allow us to function as humans, the industrial landscape has a key set of senses that can be utilized to give a holistic view of the industrial environment. By focusing on those senses and focusing on how to access them without minimal disruption, has been a key reason why I love Petasense,” Malik told TechCrunch. Petasense vibration sensor. Photo: Petasense But sensing the vibrations is just part of the story. The solution also uses machine learning to “understand” what falls in the realm of normal behavior for that machine. As it gathers data over time, it can reduce false positives and false negatives, company co-founder and CEO Abhinav Khushraj explained. In a traditional maintenance situation, the machine simply breaks and there is unscheduled downtime to fix it. What Petasense provides is the ability to predict when the machine is going to break down before it does, allowing the customer to schedule maintenance in a more logical way. If they are in the middle of a big order, they might decide to wait. If they have a big order a couple of weeks out, they may fix it now. Regardless of how they decide to proceed, having data gives the customer more control over the maintenance process. It also introduces them to the Industrial Internet of Things in an incremental way. It’s all well and good that the latest greatest machines are equipped with these types of sensors, but in reality most manufacturing companies aren’t replacing their machines anytime soon. This solution is designed today mostly for rotating machines such as motors, pumps and compressors, but down the road Petasense hopes to add sensors to monitor other types of industrial equipment. The company will be charging $399 or $599 for each sensor, depending on how sophisticated the unit is. It will also charge an additional subscription fee for access to the data and analytics on the cloud platform with varying prices, depending on data usage. Petasense was founded in 2014 and currently has 15 full-time employees divided between San Jose, CA and Bangalore, India. The latter houses the programming and R&D parts of the company.
Silicon Valley - based industrial internet of technology start - up Petasense has launched its sensor technology that , by listening to the changes in vibrations made by machinery , enables the user to predict when changes are likely to occur . Artificial sensors also learns machines ' perception of sounds to improve diagnostic capabilities . The aim is to give customers more control over the maintenance process . Sensors cost from $ 399 each and are mainly for use with rotating machines . Petasense also confirmed that it had raised $ 1.8 m in seed funding dating back to 2015 in a round led by True Ventures , with participation from silicon Ventures and angel investors .