IoT for commercial refrigeration manufacturers

A cabinet leaves your factory and you hear from it again when it fails under warranty. A controller fitted on the line reports its temperature, door, power and compressor load from wherever it ends up, to you, your dealer and the operator, each seeing only their own units.

A cook takes a tray out of a stainless steel reach-in refrigerator in a busy restaurant kitchen

What a refrigeration fleet needs to answer

Is it holding temperature

The operator wants to know before the stock is lost, not after. A probe placed with the load, and not in the return air, is what makes the answer honest.

Was it the unit or the site

A warm cabinet with the door open or the power off is not a warranty claim. Door and power state turn an unexplained warm period into an explained one.

Which units are heading for a callout

A compressor that runs longer each week to hold the same setpoint is saying something. Run current over time shows it before the unit stops.

What gets read on a refrigeration unit

A starting list, not a fixed kit. The ports are set from the dashboard, so the same controller takes a different mix of sensors on a different model.

SignalHow it is readWhat it tells you
Product temperature1-Wire or PT1000 probe placed with the loadHow long the product actually spent warm
Air temperatureA second probe in the return airHow hard the unit is working to hold setpoint
Door stateDry contact on a digital inputWhether an excursion was a fault or an open door
Power stateSupply sense on a digital inputOutages, and units unplugged at the outlet
Compressor currentClamp-on current sensor over RS485Run time, cycling and rising load
Refrigeration controllerRS485 Modbus RTU, from your register mapSetpoint, defrost state and its own alarms

Four ports on one controller, and RS485 devices share a bus, so most of this list fits on a single unit.

What your service team sees across the fleet

One machine reporting is a gadget. Every machine you have shipped reporting to the same place is a service business.

Every unit in the field, on one screen

Each machine reports to the same cloud. Your service desk sees which units are running, which are in alarm and which have gone quiet, before the customer calls.

Dealers and customers see only their own

Accounts nest: you sit above your dealers, and each dealer above its customers. A parent account cannot grant more than it holds, and a unit can be shared with a service company without handing over a login.

A record you can export

Readings and events are stored with their time and export to Excel, for a warranty claim, a service report or a disagreement about what happened and when.

Your own systems, through the API

A REST API with scoped tokens covers what the dashboard covers, so fleet data can feed your service system, your ERP or your customer portal directly.

How it fits into your product

Power from the machine

The controller takes 6 to 32 V DC, so it runs from a 12 or 24 V supply already on the machine. Its internal rechargeable battery keeps it reporting after the machine loses power, which is when the reading matters most.

Cellular, so nothing depends on the site

It connects over 4G-LTE from wherever the machine is installed. There are no Wi-Fi credentials to collect and no IT department to convince at each customer.

Your controller, over Modbus

If the machine already has a controller with an RS485 Modbus RTU port, give us its register map and we add it as a supported device. Its values and alarms then arrive alongside the sensor readings.

Your name on the dashboard and the apps

The web dashboard is served on your domain with your name, logo and colours, and the iOS and Android apps are published under your own developer accounts. Your customers log in to your product.

Nothing lost in an outage

Readings are held on the device while the network is down and sent in order when it returns, so the record has no gap where the incident was.

Sensors from the catalog for this equipment

Frequently asked questions

Does it replace the refrigeration controller?

No. The refrigeration controller runs the machine. This controller observes it and reports, and the two sit side by side. Where your controller has a Modbus port, its setpoint, defrost state and alarms are read as well.

Where should the temperature probe go?

With the product, or as close to it as the cabinet allows. Return air warms first and recovers first, so it under-reports how long the load was warm. A second probe in the air stream is still useful, for seeing how hard the unit is working.

Do you sell the controller on its own, or with the cloud?

Either. Every controller comes with OmniCloud included, and the REST API does what the dashboard does if you would rather build your own front end on top of it.

What do you need from us to start?

The supply voltage available on the machine, the signals you want reported, the register map if the machine has a Modbus controller, and how your dealers and customers should be separated. A first batch on machines already in the field is the usual way to begin.

How is the firmware kept up to date once units are in the field?

Over the air, by cellular. Where there is no network at all, the unit raises its own Wi-Fi access point and takes the update from a phone or laptop beside it.

Tell us about the machine

What it is, what you want it to report, and who needs to see which units. We come back with how the controller wires in and how the accounts would be laid out.

Talk to us →