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SmartMini Edge System for railway applications Logo smartRAIL Logo Product smartRAIL

With smartRAIL a special device for condition monitoring and condition-based maintenance in rail transport is available. It can monitor the condition of individual safety and availability relevant components as well as complete rail vehicles or entire rail fleets. This allows necessary measures to be initiated at an early stage and problems to be minimized.

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smartRAIL compact

  • Seamless, loss-free data recording
  • High computing power through quad-core processor
  • Little space required, low power consumption
  • Non-reactive connection
  • M12 connector
  • Passive cooling concept up to 85° Celsius

Completely railway certified

smartRAIL is based on the smartMINIbut is adapted to railway-specific requirements. It uses the M12 connectors designed for railways, has an acceleration sensor in addition to the GPS and can be connected to the railways using external MVB adapters and I/O modules simply expand.

smartRAIL is certified according to railway standard EN 50155, EN 45543 & IEC 61373 (for detailed information see technical data sheet)

Specialized Apps

The logger functions are configured via intelligent apps that can be loaded into the device software at any time. In addition to standard apps and an integrated odometer/running odometer smartRAIL preconfigured apps for railway applications:

  • Vibration measurements, especially on freight wagons
  • Recording of torques and speed characteristics
  • Recording of transaction data
  • Monitoring of battery and on-board voltage

Without data loss

smartRAIL is specially tailored to the high demands of rail transport. Data is recorded seamlessly and is not lost even if the mobile phone connection is interrupted.

optiMEAS security concept

  • Redundantly executed real-time Linux distribution
  • PowerController with watchdog function
  • Secure data storage through special streaming method
  • SD card as ring memory
  • Encrypted Internet transmission via HTTPS and SSL

Typical applications

  • Localization of locomotives and wagons
  • Fleet management
  • Monitoring of drives, battery voltages, doors & toilet tanks
  • mileage counter
  • Temperature and climate monitoring
  • Processing of very many data channels
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use case

Data analysis and predictive maintenance for rail vehicles

Together with optiMEAS, DB Systemtechnik GmbH is developing a predictive maintenance system with the aim of predicting the "state of health" of relevant drive components of ICE's and being able to schedule maintenance work in depots and workshops in a targeted manner.

For this purpose, smartRAIL detection systems were installed in various Deutsche Bahn ICEs in conjunction with smartI/O-modules of optiMEAS are installed. The measurement data is acquired at high sampling rates and stored in the central cloud (optiCLOUD, called FALKOS in the DB) as historical data for analyses.

Every day, around 50 gigabytes of data are collected. To be able to calculate this amount of "big data" according to the models, DB uses an analysis cluster based on Hadoop for parallel processing. Current methods for machine and deep learning and parameter determination for neural networks are used. Technologically, open source frameworks such as Tensorflow or Keras are behind it.

To be able to apply artificial intelligence in practice, perhaps the most important component is the domain knowledge from the specialist departments and workshops. This is also the experience of DB Systemtechnik's engineers: it is only by combining mathematics, IT and application knowledge that patterns can be identified that allow anomalies to be detected and recommendations made for maintenance.

Through the cooperation with optiMEAS we have already learned a great deal about the vehicles, which can be used for maintenance planning and improves the quality and availability of the fleet.

Rico Gottschald
Physicist and data analyst / DB Systemtechnik GmbH

Technical data sheet: smartRAIL