Custom
Electronics for the Operations That Extract the World's
Resources
IECEx Zone 1 intrinsically safe underground sensor firmware. UWB real-time personnel tracking in metalliferous and coal mine headings. J1939 telematics across mixed underground and surface mining fleets. Processing plant instrumentation from flotation to crusher. Tailings storage facility geotechnical monitoring that satisfies ICMM GISTM continuous monitoring requirements.
The Underground Hardware Challenge
No Other Industry on Earth Demands What Underground Mining Demands from Electronics. Every Device Below Surface Must Survive What Surface Devices Never Face.
Underground mining presents a hardware environment without equivalent. Explosive methane and coal dust atmospheres demand IECEx Zone 1 intrinsic safety certification — a requirement that governs every component selection, every PCB trace current limit, and every power budget calculation before a device can legally operate underground. One hundred percent relative humidity with acidic mine water ingress. Continuous vibration and shock from production blasting and drilling machinery. High EMI from underground electrical infrastructure, variable frequency drives, and multi-megawatt cable runs confined to narrow underground spaces. And a fundamental operational constraint: any device installed in an underground working may be inaccessible for days, weeks, or months between scheduled maintenance visits. Commercial IoT sensors and industrial electronics are not a cost saving in mining — they are a reliability failure and a regulatory liability.
Surface mining compounds the underground challenge with extremes of temperature (-40°C to 65°C in open pit environments), UV and solar radiation degradation, abrasive rock dust ingress that destroys unsealed connectors in weeks, and the mechanical shock loads of haul road vibration from 400-tonne trucks — vibration profiles that exceed IEC 60068 standard test levels for industrial electronics. A sensor mounted to a mining haul truck sees more mechanical stress in one shift than most industrial sensors experience in a year of factory operation.
Three technology waves are driving unprecedented investment in mining electronics. Underground vehicle automation — collision avoidance sensor suites for underground LHDs, autonomous navigation electronics, and remote operation interfaces — is the highest-priority capital program for large underground mining operations globally. Tailings dam safety, following high-profile failures that killed hundreds of people, now demands continuous real-time geotechnical monitoring hardware across every tailings storage facility under ICMM GISTM governance. And the critical minerals and battery materials boom is funding new underground and open pit operations that need full-stack mining technology from day one. Mining equipment OEMs, mine safety technology companies, mining automation vendors, and major mining operators all need an engineering partner with genuine IECEx and MSHA certification knowledge, underground protocol fluency, and mining domain depth.
What We Build for Mining Operations
From IECEx Zone 1 certified underground sensor nodes to open pit haul truck telematics to tailings dam geotechnical monitoring hardware — full-stack mining electronics engineering.
Underground Safety & Personnel Tracking Electronics
Mining Equipment Telematics & Collision Avoidance
Atmospheric & Gas Detection Hardware
Seismic & Geotechnical Monitoring
Processing Plant Instrumentation
Tailings Storage Facility Monitoring Hardware
Winder, Conveyor & Dewatering Electronics
Mining AI & Safety Software
IECEx Zone 1 and Zone 2 hardware design with intrinsic safety as a first-order constraint — not a certification step applied after engineering is complete. Entity parameter calculation (Ui, Ii, Pi, Ci, Li) for Ex ia and Ex ib protection concepts. Group I firedamp and Group II gas classification selection. T-class component temperature rating verification. Explosion Protection Document (EPD) preparation. IS barrier selection and entity parameter matching for every field device in the underground system.
FreeRTOS and bare metal C firmware for real-time underground safety systems — sub-second atmospheric alarm response, deterministic fault recovery, and continuous monitoring through power fluctuations. Leaky feeder system integration for underground communication device firmware. UWB positioning firmware with multipath and NLOS compensation for metalliferous mine environments. 900MHz and 2.4GHz mesh networking for underground monitoring node networks. OTA firmware update architecture for underground device fleets.
J1939 CAN Bus firmware for underground LHD, haul truck, and development equipment — including multi-network CAN Bus architectures on modern mining equipment and proprietary OEM message formats alongside standard J1939 PGNs. Proximity detection and collision avoidance electronics for underground vehicle-pedestrian safety. Payload monitoring, tyre pressure, engine diagnostics, and fatigue detection for surface haul truck fleets. Integration with Wenco, Modular Mining, and Hexagon fleet management platforms via ISO 15143 AEMP telematics standard.
Custom sensor interface hardware for flotation cell froth level and air flow monitoring, crusher and grinding mill power and bearing condition monitoring, and cyclone performance instrumentation. Slurry density and flow measurement hardware for mineral processing circuits. Modbus RTU and TCP firmware for processing plant SCADA integration. OPC-UA firmware for modern mining automation platform connectivity. DCS integration middleware for Ignition, Wonderware, Citect, and mining-specific automation platforms.
Custom seismic data acquisition firmware with high-sample-rate ADC interfaces, hardware trigger detection, and timestamp precision sufficient for microseismic event location in production underground mines. Tailings storage facility geotechnical instrument electronics — piezometer, vibrating wire transducer, inclinometer, and settlement interfaces with ICMM GISTM-compliant data transmission. Open pit slope stability monitoring hardware — GPS displacement monitoring nodes, crackmeter electronics, and radar reflector interfaces for large open pit operations.
AI and machine learning for mining equipment predictive maintenance — haul truck tyre failure prediction from pressure and temperature trend analysis, conveyor belt failure prediction from motor current and vibration signatures, processing plant mill bearing failure prediction from acoustic emission monitoring. Computer vision for mine safety — conveyor belt tear and spillage detection, open pit slope photogrammetric monitoring, processing plant froth quality assessment. iOS and Android mine management apps with offline-first architecture for underground environments.
Platforms & Protocols
The Stack We Build Mining Electronics On
Why Engineering Teams Choose Ankh
Intrinsic safety by design, not by retrofit
IECEx Zone 1 and Zone 2 certification is not applied to a finished design. It governs every component selection, every power budget calculation, every PCB trace current limit, and every enclosure material choice from the first schematic. Ankh designs underground mining electronics with intrinsic safety as a first-order constraint — not a certification step applied after the engineering is complete. We calculate entity parameters, select components within Ex ia and Ex ib power limits, and prepare Explosion Protection Documents as part of the core design process, not as a documentation afterthought.
Underground protocol fluent — leaky feeder to OPC-UA
Leaky feeder system integration, UWB real-time location, underground 900MHz and 2.4GHz mesh networking, J1939 CAN Bus for mixed mining equipment fleets, Modbus RTU and TCP for processing plant SCADA, OPC-UA for modern mining automation platforms. Custom hardware that integrates into the underground communication infrastructure and surface automation systems your mine operation already relies on — without gateway middleware adding failure points to safety-critical underground systems.
Built for the underground environment — not adapted to it
IP67 and IP68 enclosure design for continuous acidic mine water ingress. Vibration-qualified hardware for exposure to production blasting, continuous drilling, and haul road operation that exceeds IEC 60068 standard test profiles. Wide temperature range for underground fluctuations and surface extremes from -40°C to 65°C. EMI-resilient electronics designed to operate adjacent to high-power underground electrical infrastructure, variable frequency drives, and multi-megawatt cable runs in confined underground spaces.
Full stack from underground sensor to control room dashboard
Underground sensor hardware, intrinsically safe barriers, wireless node firmware, SCADA integration middleware, surface monitoring platform, and mine management mobile app — under one roof with no integration gaps between the IECEx Zone 1 sensor node at the production face and the operations technology director's real-time monitoring dashboard in the surface control room. We deliver the complete electronics and software layer of underground safety and production monitoring.
IECEx Zone 1 UWB Personnel Tracking & Multi-Gas Atmospheric Monitoring Network for an Underground Gold Mine
340 UWB anchors deployed across 18km of underground drives and development headings, 180 IECEx Zone 1 certified atmospheric monitoring nodes measuring CH4, CO, CO2, H2S, and O2 with regulatory alarm threshold management, leaky feeder communication system integration, real-time miner location visualization on underground level plans, and automated emergency mustering with evacuation tracking across 6 underground levels. Commissioned in a single 8-week maintenance shutdown with zero production disruption.
Start a Similar ProjectEngineering electronics for the mines that power the world? Let's go deep.
IECEx Zone 1 intrinsic safety designed in from component selection. Leaky feeder, UWB, J1939, Modbus, and OPC-UA firmware implemented natively — no gateway middleware adding failure points underground. Full-stack delivery from IECEx certified sensor node to surface control room dashboard.
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