// Insights & Technical Writing

From the field.

Practitioner notes on embedded systems, edge AI, industrial protocols, and the problems we've actually solved. No fluff — only things we've built or broken.

// Featured

Edge AI Protocols Nov 2025 9 min read

Running anomaly detection on a Cortex-M4 with no cloud dependency

On-device inference gets complicated fast. Here's how we trained a lightweight time-series embedding model, quantized it to INT8, and deployed it on an ARM Cortex-M4 with under 12ms inference latency — and what we got wrong the first three times.

<12ms Inference latency

INT8 Quantization

84KB Model footprint

Protocols Oct 2025

ModBus over RS-485 in electrically noisy industrial environments

Grounding, termination, and shielding decisions that took us three site visits to get right. What the spec doesn't tell you about long cable runs near VFDs.

Battery / BMS Oct 2025

SoH estimation accuracy: LFP vs NMC and why one model won't do both

Lithium iron phosphate and NMC cells degrade differently. Using the same state-of-health model for both introduces systematic errors that compound over time. Here's how we handle it.

Solar & Energy Sep 2025

Per-string yield analysis: detecting underperformance without irradiance sensors

Irradiance sensors are expensive and fail. We use inter-string statistical comparison and weather API data to flag underperforming strings within 2% of what a direct measurement would catch.

Edge AI Sep 2025

Embedding-based anomaly detection: why threshold alerting fails at scale

Fixed thresholds generate noise. Embedding-based detection learns what "normal" looks like for each machine and flags deviations — dramatically reducing false positives without losing real faults.

Drive Controls Aug 2025

Vibration signature analysis for early bearing fault detection on industrial motors

Bearing failures give advance warning through vibration harmonics weeks before a catastrophic failure. Here's how we extract and monitor those signatures in real time at the edge.

Protocols Aug 2025

BACnet vs ModBus for building automation: when to use which and why it matters

Both protocols are everywhere. BACnet is richer and more expensive to implement. ModBus is simpler and better supported. The choice depends on what you're actually trying to do — and legacy you're stuck with.

Edge AI White Paper Jul 2025

Reference architecture for industrial edge-to-cloud ML pipelines

A full technical reference: sensor selection, edge hardware sizing, gateway configuration, MQTT broker design, and cloud analytics architecture for production industrial deployments.

Battery / BMS Jul 2025

Thermal runaway early warning: what the voltage signal tells you 40 minutes before

Thermal runaway isn't sudden — it has a signature. We've catalogued the voltage deviation pattern that precedes it in LFP cells and built a detector that triggers while there's still intervention time.

Solar & Energy Jun 2025

Grid-scale BESS degradation modeling: why cycle count alone is misleading

Battery operators often track cycles. But depth of discharge, temperature history, and charge rate affect aging 3–5x more than raw cycle count. Here's the model we use for accurate RUL estimation on grid storage.