Practical reading for industrial operators — no hype.
Guides written for plant managers, engineers and operations leaders: real numbers, honest trade-offs, and the failure modes nobody puts in a brochure. Browse by topic below.
Industrial IoT — start here
The foundations: what IoT and Industrial IoT are, how the platform fits together, and how to get security and architecture right before you scale.
What is IoT? The Internet of Things explained
IoT meaning, how it works, IoT devices and sensors, real applications — and how it differs from Industrial IoT.
Industrial IoT in South Africa: a practical guide for operators
What IIoT is, what it costs, where it pays back first, and how to deploy it on real SA sites.
How to choose an industrial IoT provider in South Africa
The criteria that actually matter, the red flags, and how to run the evaluation — vendor-neutral.
The hidden costs of IoT remote monitoring in South Africa
SIM/APN, cloud, device management, install, maintenance and compliance — and how to spot a transparent quote.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in South Africa
What 4IR really is, the role of IoT and industrial automation, and a pragmatic place for SA operators to start.
Digital transformation for South African manufacturers: a roadmap
A staged, low-risk path from one proven win to a connected plant — not a seven-figure gamble.
SCADA vs IoT platform: which do you need?
Control vs visibility — the difference, when you need each, and why they work together.
Integrating LoRaWAN telemetry into SCADA (Ignition, AVEVA, Siemens)
The integration patterns (MQTT/Sparkplug, OPC-UA, Modbus), platform by platform, security and edge buffering.
Edge vs cloud for industrial IoT
Edge for resilience and real-time, cloud for scale and analytics — and why SA sites need real edge.
IIoT security: connect without exposing your PLCs
Read-only, no exposed ports, segmentation — get the data out without letting control in.
Grafana for industrial IoT dashboards
Performance monitoring, metrics vs logs, alerting — what Grafana is good and not good at on a plant.
Connectivity & resilience
Getting data off the site and keeping it flowing — choosing the right network, the right protocol, and a design that survives load shedding and remote-site power.
South Africa's IoT connectivity dilemma: 4G vs LoRaWAN vs NB-IoT vs Sigfox
A practical decision guide for choosing the right network per site — coverage, cost, power and data.
LoRaWAN in South Africa: a practical guide
What LoRaWAN is, the band it uses here, its strengths and limits, security, and where it fits.
LoRaWAN networks in SA: public vs private, network servers & gateways
Public vs private, choosing a network server (ChirpStack/TTS/Actility/AWS) and gateways (Kerlink/MultiTech/RAK/Tektelic), roaming, and end-to-end.
OPC-UA vs Modbus vs MQTT explained
The three protocols on every IIoT project — what each is for, and how they work together.
Will your IoT sensors survive load shedding?
Why outages lose data, not sensors — and how to design IoT that keeps recording through Stage 6.
Can solar power run remote IoT monitoring?
Off-grid sensing for boreholes, reservoirs and farm sensors — and how to size solar so it survives winter.
Manufacturing, OEE & condition monitoring
Make production and asset health visible — real OEE on any line, and condition monitoring that catches failures before they stop a shift.
Why nobody trusts your production dashboard — and how to fix it
Manually-entered data is why boards die within months. Machine-sourced capture — PLC reads, clamps, photo-eyes — is how trust comes back.
The real cost of unplanned downtime: what 190 field complaints reveal
Original research — fewer incidents but higher cost per event, longer recovery, and the losses that never make the log.
How much does an OEE monitoring system cost in South Africa?
The cost drivers, indicative ZAR bands per line, what inflates a quote, and how to size a pilot that pays back.
How to measure OEE on an old line without a new PLC
The signals a legacy machine already gives you, and a step-by-step path to live OEE without rip-and-replace.
Why most vibration-based motor monitoring projects are doomed to fail
The five failure modes that sink condition-monitoring projects — and how to scope one that actually pays back.
Predictive maintenance for South African mining
Beyond oil analysis — real-time vibration, temperature and current monitoring on critical assets.
Conveyor belt monitoring for mines & plants
Bearing health, belt drift and fire risk — catch the failures that stop a line before they stop it.
Water & compliance
Quantity, quality and the regulator — finding non-revenue water, monitoring treatment and quality, and automating DWS compliance.
IoT for water & wastewater monitoring in South Africa
The six water-monitoring jobs — boreholes, NRW, DWS/SANS 241 compliance, treatment works, sewer spills, discharge — and how to choose a provider.
Effluent monitoring and DWS compliance in South Africa
What the regulator expects, what to measure, and how to automate compliance reporting.
Water quality sensors explained
pH, turbidity, DO, COD, chlorine — what each tells you and which to monitor for your water.
Wastewater treatment works (WWTW) monitoring
Keep a works running and compliant — DO, pumps, blowers and final-effluent quality, with Green Drop in mind.
Non-revenue water: how smart metering cuts the losses
SA municipalities lose 37–47% of water (~R9.9bn/yr). How metering finds it and what it recovers.
What does smart water metering / NRW cost in SA?
Cost drivers, where to start cheaply with district metering, and why the recovery beats the spend.
Pressure management: cut pipe bursts & water loss
Why a modest pressure reduction cuts leakage and bursts disproportionately — and how to manage it.
Why water shops fail quality tests: what 22 pain clusters reveal
Original research on refill stations — regulator shutdowns, skipped rinses, chemical-tasting refills, and why trust is the product.
Mining & safety
MHSA-aligned safety and the monitoring behind it — collision prevention, person location, occupational hygiene, ventilation and tailings.
MHSA 8.10.1 collision prevention for trackless mobile machinery
What the law requires, the EMESRT Level 9 / PDS standard, and how to choose a system that works underground.
IoT for mining: LoRaWAN, cellular backup & intrinsically safe (ATEX/IECEx) hardware
Open-pit vs underground connectivity, the sensor/gateway/platform stack, Ex certification, and deployment pitfalls.
MHSA 16.7: missing person locator systems for underground mines
The amended Chapter 16 duty, intrinsic safety, and choosing a person-location system that works underground.
Real-time occupational hygiene monitoring in SA mines
Continuous dust, gas, DPM, noise and heat data instead of periodic spot samples — for safety and MHSA compliance.
Mine ventilation monitoring & ventilation-on-demand
Prove the air is safe everywhere — then cut a major energy bill by ventilating to demand.
Real-time tailings dam monitoring (GISTM)
Piezometers, displacement and trigger levels — how real-time monitoring supports GISTM conformance.
Proximity detection compared: radar, UWB, RFID, LiDAR
How the sensing technologies behind collision prevention differ — and why fusion usually wins.
Agriculture & fleet
Adjacent applications on the same platform — smarter irrigation, livestock traceability and fleet fuel control.
Automated irrigation ROI for a commercial farm
Water, electricity, labour and yield — where the return comes from, and how to calculate your own payback.
RFID livestock tracking: what does it cost per head?
Tags vs infrastructure, what drives the price, and how it pays back through stock-theft reduction and traceability.
Fleet fuel-theft detection: how it actually works
Fuel theft costs SA fleets ~R15bn/yr. How tank-level sensors and telematics catch it — and what you save.
More guides are published regularly — on Industrial IoT, OEE, water loss, mining safety and smart farming. Have a question you want answered? Ask us and we'll likely turn it into a guide.