Making Sense of Sound with Neuron SoundWare

Making Sense of Sound with Neuron SoundWare
Kitmondo 21 Oct 2019

We are thrilled to announce that Kitmondo have teamed up with Neuron SoundWare to simplify and enhance the experience of its clients. We have a huge expectation from this collaboration with NSW (Neuron SoundWare). NSW is a growing yet promising company which provides worldwide services for diagnosing your machine, home appliances, heavy-duty engines or any other type of machine and then informs the users about the current status of the machine. Kitmondo is bringing buyers and sellers closer for a long time now buy facilitating reuse of used machine or parts. We believe that a machine that is surplus or no longer a profitable asset for one business may be the missing part to a successful running production for another. And Neuron SoundWare will be testing every component by analyzing its sound and help our clients determine the condition of the machine they are going to buy.

Our foremost goal is to satisfy the customer by providing our best services. This partnership will surely help our customers to maintain their machines bought from Kitmondo with the help of NSW products. We believe we will be able to enhance and enrich our business and also provide newer services. These benefits make us excited about this partnership.

Interested?

Neuron SoundWare can recognize broken machines

Standing at the edge of current technology, Neuron SoundWare is a “Deep Tech” company which is uniquely developing a process and software that haven’t been tried yet. In an interview at StartupYard, the CoFounder and CEO of Neuron SoundWare, Pavel Konečný described his company, “We build and train software that understands audio.”

One of the most efficient ways to protect a machine is through the sounds they produce. Highly experienced engineers can detect suspicious machine sounds and prescribe a protective measure. But it’s not possible for an expert to monitor a machine 24/7. Neuron SoundWare comes here to protect your machine from potential failure. NSW products keep listening to every bit of sound every second and then analyze the noise in real-time. Once the system detects any anomalies, it is always ready to give a notification to the user. Neuron SoundWare does all of these with the power of Predictive Analysis and Deep Learning. Neuron devices help to protect the device and reduce the cost of replacing the broken machine by easy maintenance to increase machine lifetime. Neuron SoundWare relies on:

- Real-time ultra-fast access to scalable storage

- Easy and intelligent data processing and management

- Smarter AI

- Unlimited choice of ready to use tools

How does it work? 

Sound and vibration are the most efficient way to detect mechanical malfunctions. They have developed a diagnostic technology for early detection of broken machines. Humans are frequently used during the quality controls of air-conditioning, gearbox, etc. But Neuron SoundWare can automate the analysis using the digital brain, which emulates auditory cortex. They focus on the early detection and prediction of mechanical malfunction on any machinery. The unique pre-processing of the input data allows the neural network to learn and identify the important features quickly with high confidence.

The incredible team has already collected millions of sample audio and noise made by all sorts of a machine to train their software. Their hardware sensors are now available to install in a variety of machinery like escalators, power machines, wind turbines, pumps, compressors, turbines, cranes, medical devices like ECG machine, CNG, compressors and all sorts of transportation vehicles. For predictive maintenance and monitoring service, they have built a solution with the following components:

1. Sensors / Mics: at the beginning of the process, they will be installing a number of sensors and mics across the machine or part of a machine to be monitored.

2. Industrial IoT Devices: it will receive the sound data from the sensors and mics, store it to the database and compare and analyze in real-time to sense any anomalies in noise making.

3. Dashboard / Notifications: the result of the data analysis will be shown in a dashboard and notify the user via email and mobile notification if the sensors can detect any abnormal sound as well as prescribe possible maintenance to resolve the issue to make the machine fully functional again.

Once you order online, NSW will provide all sort of IoT supports and also provide online manual, video guides and PDF tutorials for self-installation of the IoT devices and sensors. Initially, this will require internet connectivity for setup and verifying functionality and connectivity. Over the next two weeks, this system will collect and analyze every sound it makes. It focuses on the anomalies as well as regular noise. The initial goal is to collect sufficient quality and quantity for the final calibration of the system.

What makes Neuron SoundWare special? 

Neuron SoundWare is a provider of predictive maintenance, asset monitoring, and acoustic quality control with an end-to-end solution including an advanced edge computing device. The company is not just an empty name, they have capability and brain to make this happen.

- Immense Database Of Sounds - They have processed terabytes of training audio data for our clients already.

- High Accuracy - NSW accurately detects anomalies in each individual component of a given machine.

- Ai Machine Learning Algorithms - Utilizing Neural Networks, they provide an actionable analysis with a real-time, end-to-end solution.

Hardware products 

 Over the last 4 years, the developers and all the team members of NSW worked hard to make their goal come live. Now they have introduced us with some revolutionary products which have already been employed. AIRBUS in France has installed this system in all of their buses and more and bigger industries are coming forward to embrace the facility NSW is providing.

nBox

Short abbreviation of Neuron Box. This standalone IoT recording & computing device can be installed to enable audio monitoring of any asset. Discover the abundant edge computing power that will give you the possibility to run complex machine learning models without a need to transfer data to the cloud. This can analyze the noise made by a machine to predict and anomalies. Some of its key features are:

- Up to 12 channels of simultaneous recording with various microphones and acoustic sensors

- Piezo / Airborne / Condenser / Ultrasonic / MEMs accelerometers 

- Intelligent recording software supporting multiple audio file types (WAV, OGG, FLAC) and recording modes 

- On-device data processing/computing

- 2 GB RAM and 32 GB eMMC storage capacity

- LAN / Wi-Fi / LTE connectivity for data transfers

- Supporting microSD cards and external hard drives

- LED circle status signalization

- Wide range of working temperature

- Easy installation next to a machine or into a DIN ledge


nCard

Neuron SoundWare introduced another great product which can be used with smaller machines with less complexity. nCard is a custom designed shielded sound card that connects to a mobile phone and allows to make high-resolution audio recordings anytime, anywhere. nCard is run by Android operating system, the biggest mobile platform to date. This makes so much hand to get any notification in your mobile phone regarding to abnormalities of machines. This is also very lightweight, around 100 gram and made of plastic and aluminum, making it super durable.

The features that make nCard so special are: 

- Pocket-sized and durable

- Supports 2-channel recording (2 sensors)

- Headphones jack 3.5 mm

- Micro USB connection to a mobile phone

- nCard App allows to record and tag audio files, upload them to Neuron SW cloud for analysis, and check results in real-time (on demand)


Maintenance and cost reduction with Neuron SoundWare

 The revolutionary solutions to machine lifetime have brought about the significant reduction in total cost. Unplanned downtime of a cogeneration unit (CHP), critical compressor, generator, pump, conveyor belt or an elevator typically has a high impact on its profitability. NSW uses Artificial Intelligence to recognize upcoming mechanical failures and provide you enough time to organize/secure timely maintenance in order to avoid collateral damage. The products of NSW should help reducing cost by,

- Lowering maintenance cost by saving on material and spare parts. The client will need to change or fix only the damaged parts detected by our incredible AI.

- Reduce lost production time and increase revenue. Predictive damage notification helps the machine fully stopped and maintain it properly.

- Reduce energy costs by saving gas and fuels.

- Optimize asset value by prolonging lifetime.

Other applications of Neuron SoundWare

Industry sound analysis is just one application of this amazing tech, there could be many applications outside the box. One possible service can be developed for call centers where, sometimes, the way one talks is more important than the speech itself. NSW are trying to develop such an algorithm that will understand the expression and emotions of calling clients and modify the automated response accordingly. If this becomes possible, this technology can replace call centers agents completely since the machine never gets tired of annoyed. The trick is very simple. NSW would collect voice data of the past several months and analyze them to learn the behaviour and learn the job. The new algorithm will develop a complex relationship with human and machine.

Customer Support of Neuron SoundWare

A great customer support system is very important for any user-friendly service. Luckily, we have partnered with such a company which provides:

- Hardware Installation support: Extremely experienced technicians will be available for installing all facilities from NSW side as well as manuals for self-installation.

- 24/7 service monitoring: Cutting edge AI algorithm monitors everything that goes with your machine.

- Helpdesk support: Expert customer service providers are always ready to listen from you to address and solve any issue.

- Constantly researching to develop the existing algorithm and develop new designs by UX designers.

- Periodical service updates without any extra cost to secure your IoT devices.

Kitmondo in a partnership with Neuron SoundWare

We provide the best services in buying and selling used machines, we are thinking over to expand the services by working in close partnership with NSW. Kitmondo deals with the machines, sellers come to Kitmondo for selling their used machinery and to buy. We always care about the damage protection of the machine. Our collaboration will encourage our trusted clients to think about NSW products as well. Once our buyers install NSW services along, they can easily expand the lifespan of their purchased product and reduce cost. We are happy to have such a partner so we can offer the newest and the best solutions for our clients.

Neuron SoundWare is building a way for machines to be able to interact with the human based on the sound it makes, which is really incredible. Most of the works of analysis is based on the natural language processing and listening. But this technology is still new and requires many inventions that are still future. Kitmondo wants to stay with Neuron SoundWare in this effort.

Interested?