Petasense

Petasense is an industrial asset reliability and predictive maintenance system that combines wireless condition-monitoring hardware with cloud software, machine learning, and web and mobile applications. It is designed to continuously monitor rotating and non-rotating equipment, identify abnormal asset behavior, and give reliability teams earlier visibility into developing faults.

1. Condition monitoring: Petasense's current Vibration Mote line includes the VM4 and VM4 Pro for equipment such as motors, pumps, fans, compressors, and gearboxes. Both collect triaxial vibration and temperature data, while the VM4 Pro also detects running speed and is intended for variable-speed, batched, and spared equipment. The separate Transmitter can connect to vibration, temperature, pressure, current, ultrasound, and many third-party industrial sensors for monitoring a broader range of assets.
2. ARO Cloud analytics: The Asset Reliability & Optimization Cloud processes sensor data and uses machine learning to create asset-specific health scores based on deviation from established operating baselines. Engineers can investigate problems through trend charts, time waveforms, spectra, harmonic and sideband analysis, bearing tones, configurable vibration measurements, demodulated spectra, alerts, and other diagnostic tools.
3. Deployment and integration: Sensors normally communicate over enterprise Wi-Fi, although cellular gateway options are available where plant Wi-Fi is unsuitable. Petasense provides REST APIs and integrations with process historians and CMMS/EAM systems, while its cloud currently runs on Google Cloud with a private-cloud option available by request. Buyers should therefore assess network coverage, sensor and measurement requirements, integration needs, and internal cloud policies before deployment.
4. Commercial model: Petasense deployments combine upfront hardware and setup costs with an ongoing ARO Cloud subscription. The total investment depends on factors such as the number of monitored assets, sensor types, installation requirements, and the scale of the condition-monitoring program rather than a simple public per-user software price.

Petasense is most relevant to industrial reliability and maintenance teams that want to replace or supplement periodic manual inspection with continuous remote condition monitoring. Its value depends on asset criticality, the faults and parameters that need to be monitored, existing maintenance practices, connectivity, and whether earlier detection can reduce unplanned downtime or unnecessary maintenance.