Crane Monitoring System

Overview

Industrial cranes typically signal their status through indicator lights rather than a network connection, which means a fault can go unnoticed until someone happens to look. I built a small IoT system that watches those lights automatically and raises an alert the moment something changes.

The Challenge

The crane had no existing telemetry — the only signal available was the physical indicator light pattern. Any solution had to read that visually and reliably in a physical environment, and know the difference between a real fault and a normal state change, without generating so many alerts that people started ignoring them.

What I Built

I used a Raspberry Pi with a TCS34725 colour sensor positioned to read the crane's indicator light, and built logic to interpret the light's colour and pattern as specific status states. When a fault state is detected, the system sends an automated email alert — with debounce logic so a brief flicker doesn't trigger a false alarm, escalation reminders if the fault isn't acknowledged, and a recovery notification once the light returns to normal. The whole thing runs as a systemd service, so it starts automatically and stays running without manual intervention.

Outcome

Fault conditions get flagged automatically instead of relying on someone noticing a light change, with escalation logic that prevents a small problem from being missed for hours.

Tech Stack