In 2016 I mocked up an app called CyberView. A camera pointed at a robot welding cell, a run signal, a part count, a button to send a stop signal to the cell. I knew from selling robots for a…
MiR robots are the easy way to move material around a factory. There are no wires in the floor and no fixed paths: you drive the robot round once, it maps the building, and from then on it finds its…
If you are installing SCADA or MES, the robots are usually the awkward part. PLCs, drives and sensors go in without much fuss. Robots are different. Each brand has its own controller, its own protocol and, more often than not,…
Universal Robots cobots are everywhere. Over 100,000 deployed worldwide, running machine tending, palletising, welding and a great deal else. UR Robots were bought to run on their own, and they mostly do. The problem is what happens when they don’t.…
Your team doesn’t need to leave Teams to know a machine is down. RoboVigil now posts every fault alert for a factory straight into the channel you choose. The push notification on your phone is still the primary way RoboVigil…
Your team doesn’t need to leave Slack to know a machine is down. RoboVigil now posts every fault alert for a factory straight into the channel you choose. The push notification on your phone is still the primary way RoboVigil…
The most common objection I get is not about price, features or robot brands. It is this: “IT won’t let us put the robot on the network.” They are absolutely right to say it! A twelve-year-old robot controller running an…
MQTT is a widely used protocol in industrial monitoring — everything from a £90 box with three wires in it to a full Sparkplug B installation covering an entire site. RoboVigil supports both ends. This guide covers the difference between…
OmniCore is ABB’s newest controller generation. But like any robots, once the factory lights go out they’re effectively invisible. If a robot faults overnight, production stays down until somebody physically notices. RoboVigil connects directly to the OmniCore and gives you…
We all love a yellow robot. This guide covers how RoboVigil connects to FANUC robots, what data you get, and how setup works. How the Connector Works FANUC controllers speak two useful interfaces as standard. The first is the built-in…
OEE — Overall Equipment Effectiveness — is widely talked about in manufacturing. Unfortunately, frequently OEE isn’t measured properly. Measurements that are easy to make are often not accurate enough to make informed decisions on how well your equipment is performing…
For as long as industrial robots have existed, there’s been a vision attached to them. The robots do the work. The humans pursue higher things. Go to the beach, read a good book, watch a film — whatever you want…
Every so often someone asks how RoboVigil stacks up against Fabrico. It’s a fair question, because on the surface they look like they’re in the same world — both cloud platforms, both aimed at manufacturers, both talking about machine uptime.…
People sometimes ask why a machine monitoring platform needs cameras. The data tells you the machine has stopped, an alarm code tells you why — what’s the camera for? The honest answer is that the data only ever tells you…
There’s a pattern I’ve seen in manufacturing every time the economy tightens, and I’m seeing it again now. Nobody’s signing off on new capital equipment. The quotes go in, they get filed under “next year,” and the existing kit gets…
Every machine has a reliability curve, and it’s not flat. Equipment is at its most reliable somewhere in the middle of its life — past the early teething problems, before the wear sets in. After that, things start to drift.…
If you’re evaluating OEE and machine monitoring platforms, Evocon should come up. They’ve been around since 2010, they’re used in over 1,000 factories across 50 countries, and they have strong case studies from companies like Mars and Saint-Gobain. They’re a…
Injection moulding is one of the few manufacturing processes where the machine itself already speaks a standardised monitoring language. Euromap 77, the OPC-UA companion specification for injection moulding machines, defines a common data model across manufacturers — Engel, Arburg, KraussMaffei,…
We love ABB and ABB IRC5 robots are everywhere — welding cells, palletisers, machine tending, packaging lines. But most are effectively invisible once the factory lights go out. If a robot faults overnight, production stays down until somebody physically notices.…
OPC-UA is a protocol that lets monitoring software read data directly from your machines — cycle times, fault codes, spindle speeds, program states, temperatures — without proprietary drivers or middleware. If you’re evaluating machine monitoring platforms, you’ll see OPC-UA mentioned…
If you’re evaluating cloud-based machine monitoring platforms, MachineCDN will come up. They’re an aggressive content marketer — their blog ranks for dozens of comparison keywords — and they position themselves as the fastest path from raw machine data to actionable…
If you’re researching machine monitoring platforms, MachineMetrics should be on your list. They’re the most well-known name in the space, particularly in CNC machining. They’ve raised over $30 million in venture funding and they’ve connected thousands of machines. RoboVigil is…
If you’re evaluating machine monitoring platforms in the UK, FourJaw and RoboVigil should both appear on your shortlist. They’re both cloud-based, both aimed at manufacturers running 5 to 200 machines, and both priced in a similar range. But they take…
Most factory managers aren’t comparing monitoring platforms. They’re deciding whether to monitor at all. The machines are running, parts are shipping, and the whiteboard in the office has some OEE calculations on it from last Thursday. Good enough, right? Here’s…
