Oil & Gas & Mining - Gateworks Corporation

Oil & Gas and Mining Monitoring & Communication

Gateworks Corporation is a leading supplier of industrial grade ARM based SBCs that can be used to implement high performance oil & gas and mining solutions. Many outdoor mining applications require rugged, industrial temperature rated hardware which is where Gateworks SBCs excel. These SBCs are Made in the USA which result in a high quality and robust product. Gateworks SBCs provide wireless data communications for oil field sensors. Monitoring wells, gas line pressure, and mining vehicle location allows service before catastrophic failures occur.

Human Machine Interface – GUI Display

Gateworks SBC’s have multiple display options, including HDMI and LVDS for a LCD. A touchscreen LCD is often used in the field as a graphical user interface to monitor and control a more complex oil or gas system. The LCD can not only display temperature, pressure and other data, but can also act as a control panel to switch valves and tune systems.

Wired and Wireless Communication, Including Mesh Networking

Advanced above ground mining requires mobile, hi-power wireless nodes used for vehicle tracking and communicating vehicle status back to main control center. This allows vehicles to be scheduled and directed for optimum efficiency. Mesh networking is often used so each mining vehicle can contribute to the network. Different mesh systems are available on the Gateworks SBCs, including 802.11s and Batman mesh. This also is similar to Gateworks being used in Smart Fleet Management, in this case the fleet is all the mining heavy equipment.

In shaft mining, Gateworks SBCs can be high-power wireless nodes typically configured with mesh software to allow VOIP and data communications inside the mines. Location data using GPS for miners can be provided using received signal strength metrics.

Shaft Mining requires wireless mesh communication

Out in the oceans where oil rigs are setup, wireless communication of instrument and sensor data can be sent to control towers. Gateworks SBCs can create a secure WLAN links between platforms and buoys.

Gateworks SBC’s feature Mini-PCIe expansion slots which allow support of a variety of wireless standards such as Cellular (LTE/CATM1), WiFi, Bluetooth, SubGHz, Thread, WiSun, Zigbee LoRa, SigFox and Satellite. The Mini-PCIe slots provide customers with a flexible plug-n-play platform that can be tailored to meet their exact specifications. Different wireless standards support important rugged requirements, such as mesh and point to point networking.

Single, dual and 5-port Gigabit Ethernet models are available including SFP Fiber support.

Machine Learning & Recognition

Gateworks SBCs can act as as platform for certain machine learning applications utilizing things such as a tensor processing unit (TPU) to detect oil derelict and sensor abnormalities and patterns. Camera recognition can also be implemented through the TPU. The TPU device would interface through one of the high-speed Mini-PCIe slots.

Oil and Gas Sensors

Sensors play a crucial role in indicating the health of a system. These may include pressure, temperature, humidity, motion, vibration and infrared. Gateworks SBCs include GPIO, USB, CAN, RS232, RS485, SPI and I2C interfaces for connecting local sensors.

Bluetooth Low Energy has become extremely popular for interfacing to sensors wirelessly. This sensor data can then be stored and analyzed locally on the Gateworks SBC or pushed up to a cloud server for more long term storage and heavier analysis.

RFID can also be utilized for tracking and monitoring things such as equipment and assets.A RFID system can typically be integrated with the Gateworks SBC through the Mini-PCIe slot. A common industrial solution can be found through companies such as Impinj.

Flexible Software

All boards support an Open Source Linux OS (Ubuntu, OpenWrt) which provides the user with complete access and control of the data and allows the use of any of the large number of cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS).

Flexible Configurations

Gateworks can also provide customers with a “Special” configuration of our standard products. This “Special” program allows customers to create cost and feature optimized versions of our standard products. The special is assigned a unique, revision locked, part number so customers can be insured they receive the same exact configuration every time they order. Note there is a 100-piece minimum order quantity for special configuration models. Some of the items that can be configured under the “Specials” program are:

Changing components such as DRAM size, Flash size, or CPU type/speed
Removing components not used to lower the cost of the product
Adding optional components designed into the product but not loaded on the standard version (ie. locking headers)
Programming the customer firmware

For high volume applications, Gateworks can also design a full custom SBC to meet the customer exact needs. Contact sales@gateworks.com for more information and to discuss your exact needs.

Oil & Gas and Mining Monitoring & Communication

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