Remote Pump Activation: 1,400km Dust Suppression

The Headache

A client’s dust suppression system was initially designed for manual water carts, using a simple infield remote switch to activate the inline pump at the water standpipe that injected producrt as it filled. However, when the mine transitioned to autonomous water trucks, the system broke: there was no one in the cab to flip the switch. This forced staff to drive out to the standpipe just to activate the pump—negating the efficiency of the autonomous fleet.

The mine required a solution where operators in a Perth control room, 1,400km away, could trigger the chemical injection. After an initial technology partner struggled to deliver with leads times that where 4 months out at minimum, we were brought in to solve it on an accelerated timeline.

The Process

We moved immediately into a rapid prototyping phase to bridge the gap between heavy hardware and remote web-based control.

• UI/UX Feedback: Before touching hardware, we mocked up the control room interface to get immediate feedback from the client and operators who would be using it.
• Independent Connectivity: To ensure 99.9% uptime regardless of local site infrastructure, we provisioned our own SIM cards on the IoT-M network. This provided a dedicated, low-latency pipe for remote device operation.
• Physical Implementation: Our client provided a pump unit for bench testing. We custom-manufactured an electrical enclosure with integrated cooling to survive the harsh mine site environment and integrated antenna mount with alarm integration for a neat final packaging solution.
• Safety Engineering: Having previously worked in automation, we realised there were a few hoops to jump through for compliance and that any potential remote activation would need some visual and audible alerting for any potential in-field personnel.We programmed a critical safety sequence: an audible alarm sounds three times in coordination with a flashing beacon before the pump activates, ensuring infield personnel are alerted to the remote start.

The Result

We delivered a fully functional, field-ready unit that integrates with the existing units dosage control, timing, and remote monitoring into a single interface. By owning the connectivity layer, we eliminated the "connectivity guesswork" for the client.

Following successful field testing, the client has already moved to implement additional units, effectively removing the need for manual intervention in the autonomous water cycle.