Remote monitoring system for Mexican oil pipelines

Designed and developped in La Nave Makerspace

Technology - machines & tools Industry & innovation Energy & environment

It’s a remote monitoring system that measures all the time the temperature and pression of oil that flows in strategic points of a pipelines area. The system is made of several measuring boxes that send data (temperature, pression) every 10 minutes, with a LoRa communication protocol, to a concentrator. The concentrator sends the information collected with Internet to the company information system through a secured and specific protocol. All the information send by the sensor boxes and concentrator are encrypted.

The advantages of this solution is the low cost, the Internet independence and the energy autonomy of each measuring boxes.

This project will be used by an oil company to automatically and remotely identify issues (oil leak or oil robbery) within remote oil production area.

Technologies used

3D printing Electronics CNC milling
  • What’s the project story?

One year ago, an employee of the PEMEX oil company came in Hacedores makerspace to discover digital fabrication. At this time, Ricardo and I were employed in this place and he asked us for help to understand the potential of digital fabrication. We exchanged a lot about what can be applied in his job until he had the idea to create his own business, Petresens, to provide his former company with a solution to remotely monitor the oil pipelines. In our country, half of the oil and gas production is stolen by inhabitants. The opportunity was significant. PEMEX was already buying European solutions but they were looking for a low cost and more specific solution. He got an annual budget from PEMEX to develop the solution and ask to us, after we created La Nave Makerspace, to design all the system from the measurements to the information transfer from the remote area. Due to his knowledge of the company security rules, he was in charge to design the information transfer protocol used to send collected information into the company information system.

  • How the workshop was useful ?

With our experience in electronic, we used Rasberry PI technology and the LoRa open source solution to send data measured without internet. In one month, with the knowledge of the team and the machines available in the makerspaces (CNC milling to do the cards, electronic tools, …), we iterated through 3 prototypes until we reached the final version.

  • What’s the project’s greatest success far?

We succeeded to find in a short period of time a low budget solution that fit with the company constraints and requirements (no internet, resistant to humidity, encrypted, …)

  • What’s your greatest failure(s)& lesson(s) so far?

The balance between this project and the beginning of the makerspace activities was difficult to find. We learnt how to deal with deadlines and how to better plan our activities.

  • What’s your vision for the project & next steps?

The remaining part of the project to be achieved in the miniaturization of the cards to be sent to a Chinese company to produce pieces in volumes and the design of the concentrator container with internet supply, solar panels or resistance to humidity.

50 systems should be produced next year to cover 3 oil and gas Mexican plants (Villahermosa, …). If it works, we will eventually cover all the Mexican plants.

  • How can anyone interested can contribute to the project?

We are looking for an expert in communication network to strengthen our expertise. We aim to design a full solution ready to be deployed.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are looking for a similar monitoring system in high scale. Many applications can be imagined and quickly developed such as urban purposes.

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