TRANSPORT & ASSETS / FLEET & PLANT
Vehicle and plant battery monitoring
Found flat at the moment it was needed
Vehicles and plant that sit between uses kill batteries. Standby fire appliances, gritters waiting for a cold snap, welfare units, trailers, access platforms, agricultural machinery over winter, and pool vehicles that nobody drove for three weeks all share the same failure: parasitic drain slowly flattens a battery, and nobody finds out until somebody turns the key at exactly the moment the asset is needed. The seasonal cases are the worst, because the gap between the last use and the critical use can be months, and a battery that was fine in October is not necessarily fine in January.
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The difference
Vehicle battery monitoring: what changes the day it goes live
Vehicles and plant that sit between uses kill batteries. Standby fire appliances, gritters waiting for a cold snap, welfare units, trailers, access platforms, agricultural machinery over winter, and pool vehicles that nobody drove for three weeks all share the same failure: parasitic drain slowly flattens a battery, and nobody finds out until somebody turns the key at exactly the moment the asset is needed. The seasonal cases are the worst, because the gap between the last use and the critical use can be months, and a battery that was fine in October is not necessarily fine in January.
- Battery voltage per vehicle or plant item, so parasitic drain and ageing are visible while a charge still fixes it
- Seasonal and standby assets checked continuously through the months nobody touches them, which is exactly when they fail
- Charge rounds targeted at the vehicles that need it, instead of a depot-wide routine or nothing at all
- Fewer jump-starts, fewer recovery callouts and fewer assets unavailable at the moment they were being counted on
What you get
- 01
Battery voltage per vehicle or plant item, so parasitic drain and ageing are visible while a charge still fixes it
- 02
Seasonal and standby assets checked continuously through the months nobody touches them, which is exactly when they fail
- 03
Charge rounds targeted at the vehicles that need it, instead of a depot-wide routine or nothing at all
- 04
Fewer jump-starts, fewer recovery callouts and fewer assets unavailable at the moment they were being counted on
The full stack, applied here
All five layers, one accountable system
Every Indiott build runs all five layers as one accountable system. Follow a single live signal from the sensor that catches it to the report that proves it.
Turnkey LoRaWAN and industrial sensors read the physical world at the edge, on battery, without rewiring the site.
Hands a reading to CONNECT ↓
Gateways, industrial routers and serial device servers carry every reading back over LoRaWAN, 4G, 5G, Ethernet or satellite, so the far edge reports as reliably as the plant room.
Hands a signed stream to SECURE ↓
OT security by design: managed switching, VPN and firewall routers, protocol gateways and hardware data diodes keep the network segmented and the data tamper-evident to IEC 62443.
Hands a trusted stream to CONTROL ↓
When you want the system to act, remote IO, wireless valves and the bespoke Indiott Engineering line close the loop, dose, switch, isolate or interlock, with no human in the middle.
Hands an action to MANAGE ↓
The software layer turns it into decisions: live dashboards, mapping, alarming and analytics, with one-tap reports and clean feeds into your SCADA, BMS or existing platform.
The loop is closed ✓
How teams start
From a single pilot to the whole portfolio
You do not boil the ocean. Nearly every rollout runs the same four moves, and you own a working, evidenced result at the end of the first one.
Scope & risk map
We walk the sites, list the assets and pin the one constraint that matters, then agree what a good result looks like before a single sensor is bought.
Pilot on one site
A focused set of sensors goes onto one site or asset group, live on our telemetry and dashboards, wired to the people who need the alert.
Validate & standardise
We tune thresholds, kill false positives, confirm the integration into your SCADA, BMS or CAFM, and write the standard design down so it repeats.
Scale the portfolio
The proven design rolls out across the estate, reusing the same hardware standards and data models so every site reads the same way.
The vehicle battery monitoring kit we deploy
Full catalogue
Urban.io Activity Sensor
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Urban.io Ambient Temperature Sensor
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Urban.io Battery Test Sensor
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Urban.io Current Sensor
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Urban.io Delta Pressure Sensor
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Urban.io Gateway
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Urban.io Humidity Sensor
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Urban.io Light Sensor
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| Model | Key specification | Price ex VAT | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urban.io Activity Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Ambient Temperature Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Battery Test Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Current Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Delta Pressure Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Gateway | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Humidity Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
| Urban.io Light Sensor | — | Price on request | Quote only |
Brands in this kit: Urban.io
Why Indiott
A specialist stack, not a box-shifter
Brand-agnostic by design
We pick the best of each brand for the layer and the environment, not one vendor catalogue. Milesight, AquaIoT, Atop, Browan, SpecSens and Urban.io, chosen on merit.
The whole stack, one supplier
Sensing, connectivity, OT security, control and the dashboard come from one accountable team, so there is no finger-pointing when something needs to talk to something else.
Specified and supported in Britain
UK-based engineers scope the site, quote the kit and stand behind it, with compliance mapped to the regimes your auditors actually cite.
Honest kit, honest pricing
Prices are shown where we can, quoted fast where we cannot, and you get a straight answer and a bill of materials within one working day.
DEPLOYED IN THE FIELD
Compliance this answers to
| Standard | What it requires |
|---|---|
| PUWER 1998 | work equipment maintained in an efficient state and in good repair, which for standby plant includes being able to start |
| Civil Contingencies Act 2004 | category one and two responders must maintain the readiness of assets underpinning their emergency plans |
| Corporate fleet duty of care | evidence that vehicles were maintained in a serviceable condition between uses |
What it costs, roughly
One sensor per vehicle plus a shared depot gateway is among the cheapest per-asset applications here, in the low tens of pounds per vehicle at fleet scale. Against a single recovery callout or an unavailable appliance, the payback is short. Itemised within one working day.
Vehicle battery monitoring: asked before buying
Is this not just telematics, which we may already have?
If your telematics reports battery voltage and the unit stays powered on a parked vehicle, then yes, use that and do not buy this. In practice many telematics units sleep to avoid being the drain themselves, and plenty of assets here are trailers, welfare units and plant with no telematics at all. This is aimed squarely at parked and unpowered assets rather than at vehicles in daily use.
Will the sensor itself drain the battery?
No. It runs on its own replaceable coin cell for around two years and takes a voltage measurement rather than power from the vehicle, which matters given the whole problem being solved is parasitic drain. A monitoring device that contributed to the fault would be self-defeating.
Does it work when the vehicle leaves the depot?
Not beyond gateway range, and that is a genuine limitation worth stating plainly. This is designed for assets that sit in a yard, depot or compound, which is where the flat-battery problem lives. For vehicles in constant use across the country, telematics is the right tool and we will say so.
Next step
Scope it with an engineer.
Tell us the site, the assets and the constraint. You get a bill of materials and a straight answer within one working day.
- A bill of materials sized to your site
- Priced ex VAT, UK entity, no login wall
Rather talk it through? Call 023 9223 3611
Received. An engineer has it.
You will hear back within one working day with the parts, the prices and the lead time. A confirmation is on its way to your inbox.
If it is urgent, call 023 9223 3611.