Public agencies across the world warn that flushing wipes cause major sewer infrastructure issues at wastewater treatment facilities, creating a significant public health risk.

Sewage systems are impacted as consumers flush disinfectant wipes, paper towels, and napkins, an unintended consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wipes get caught on misaligned pipe joints choking sewer lines and wrapping around pump motors, causing clogs, excessive strain, and infrastructure damage. These clogs can result in overflows of raw sewage into local rivers and lakes, and creating backups into people’s homes. Significant blockages often require municipal staff to clear them, at a time when efforts and tax dollars need to be focused on critical services.

“Wastewater treatment facilities around the state already are reporting issues with their sewer management collection systems,” the California State Water Board said in a statement. “Wipes are among the leading causes of sewer system backups, impacting sewer system and treatment plant pumps and treatment systems.”

myDevices, the IoT Solutions company, and éolane, the leader in electronic industrial services and connected solutions, announces the launch of BOB Assistant by éolane™, the first predictive maintenance solution for industrial equipment with embedded artificial intelligence that utilizes LoRa® Technology.

The predictive maintenance solution gathers data related to the performance of equipment such as sewage pumps, providing insight into the machine’s current health, helping predict future breakdowns. It serves various industries in manufacturing, automotive, energy, oil, gas, and building & facility management.

This powerful industrial IoT solution optimizes machine maintenance schedules and service logistics, helping ensure uptime and reduce costs by decreasing traditional onsite visual inspections with 24/7 remote monitoring. Place the sensor directly on machines, and it will learn and analyze the natural vibration patterns for that specific machine in that specific environment over a 7-day learning period. After the machine learning is complete, the solution will send SMS and email alerts if the sensor detects anomalies that exceed the threshold of the established baseline.

myDevices’ IoT solutions have been developed from edge to cloud to meet the highest security standards. Combining the built-in security of the LoRaWAN protocol with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Hub, our Predictive Maintenance solution provides secure and reliable communication between the IoT application and the BOB Assistant by éolane sensors, it manages with per-device authentication, built-in device management, and scaled provisioning.

BOB Assistant by éolane is:

• Intelligent: After the baseline is established, the sensor applies analysis algorithms to the data and alerts staff of potential issues.
• Visual: View machines’ operating status on the web dashboard and mobile app, including total runtime, anomaly reporting, and access to reports.
• Simple: It takes zero infrastructure, zero wiring, and zero configuration to install. The sensor is placed on the equipment and works independently for several years.
• Connected: LoRaWAN® technology provides maximum coverage across the entire facility regardless of its physical environment, with minimal energy consumption and long battery life.
• Secured: Your equipment production data is safe with BOB Assistant by éolane. It retains it and sends only end-to-end AES encrypted scan reports to the cloud.

“Water treatment facilities are facing an increase in sewage pump clogs posing an additional public health risk amidst the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Kevin Bromber, CEO & Founder of myDevices.

“The financial cost of downtime can be significant and hurts the bottom line. With the myDevices and BOB Assistant by éolane solution, facilities with industrial machines can go from costly corrective maintenance to preventative and predictive maintenance.”

“We designed the BOB Assistant by éolane sensor, with embedded artificial intelligence, to enable mechanical performance optimization and energy savings,” said Henri Juin, CEO of éolane. “We know well the many Industry 4.0 challenges to implement predictive maintenance and created BOB Assistant by éolane to simplify its deployment. No wires, it’s off-network, and requires zero configuration to make it the industries’ first autonomous predictive maintenance solution.”

“BOB Assistant by éolane attached to our plant equipment has become a vital addition to our team,” said Hervé Benhammou, Technical Project Engineer at Véolia. “The solution notifies our team before major machine malfunctions. A perfect example was our wastewater treatment plant in Angers where we were alerted to a drift with an agitator sludge digestor machine. Our maintenance team was able to intervene on time to maintain the injection of biogas into the network. It was critical to keep the machine functioning properly but provided time and cost savings.”

BOB Assistant by éolane Predictive Maintenance and other myDevices’ Plug & Play solutions are available through Sprint Business, as well as a growing network of channel partners.