# Writing, when there's something worth saying. Technical field notes, values pieces, and the occasional post-mortem. No SEO filler. No "5 trends in IoT for 2026." ## Articles - **The first 30 days of a deployment** Signing the PO is the start, not the finish. The first month decides whether a deployment becomes infrastructure the site forgets it has, or a support ticket that never closes. Here's the arc — a composite of the ones that went well. [Read more](/content/journal/the-first-30-days-of-a-deployment/index.html) - **Designing for the dead zone** We've written about picking a good cellular link. This is the other half of the problem — what the system does when there's no link at all, for a minute, an hour, or a whole shift. Off-highway, that isn't an edge case. It's Tuesday. [Read more](/content/journal/connectivity-dead-zones/index.html) - **What a BLE tag's battery actually lasts** The datasheet says five years. The tag on the excavator went dark in fourteen months. Neither number is a lie — they're answers to different questions. Here's what actually drains a coin cell in the field, and why tags die all at once instead of slowly. [Read more](/content/journal/what-a-ble-tag-battery-lasts/index.html) - **Rental hours and the return-day argument** The rental house's invoice says the machine ran 180 hours. Your operator swears it was closer to 140. Both of you are reading a meter — only one of you was watching it the whole time. Here's how telemetry settles it without starting a second fight. [Read more](/content/journal/rental-hours-and-the-return-day/index.html) - **A day in Fleet** The new Fleet App ships soon. Instead of a feature list, here's what a Tuesday looks like for an ops lead with it open — from the 7am inbox paragraph to the 5pm audit log. [Read more](/content/journal/a-day-in-fleet/index.html) - **Why off-highway equipment is its own IoT problem** A connected forklift is a known problem. A haul truck on a mine bench, an excavator on a remote easement, or a tractor halfway across a section — those are different problems wearing the same name. [Read more](/content/journal/off-highway-iot-is-different/index.html) - **Solar and battery sizing for remote sites: the math nobody does** Two panels and a deep-cycle battery is not a power system. It's a power system that works in May. Here's how we actually size off-grid IoT installs so they survive February. [Read more](/content/journal/solar-and-battery-for-remote-sites/index.html) - **Site surveys: the things you measure that aren't on the spec sheet** A spec sheet tells you what the hardware can do. A site survey tells you whether it will. Two hours on a roof saves a six-week return-trip story. [Read more](/content/journal/site-surveys-what-to-measure/index.html) - **AI in IoT: what actually runs in production** Every IoT vendor has an AI story. Here's where machine learning genuinely earns its place in a real pipeline — and where it quietly gets replaced by a for loop. [Read more](/content/journal/ai-in-iot-what-actually-runs/index.html) - **CMH and the warranty conversation** When a $40,000 engine fails at 1,840 hours and the warranty runs to 2,000, what counts as proof? The boring bookkeeping that decides whether the claim gets paid. [Read more](/content/journal/cmh-and-warranty/index.html) - **CMH from telemetry vs CMH from the clipboard** The dashboard says 4,820 hours. The operator's logbook says 5,180. The gap is real, it's persistent, and it's costing someone money. Here's how to think about it. [Read more](/content/journal/cmh-telemetry-vs-clipboard/index.html) - **What "running" actually means** Every yard tracks "machine hours" and every yard means something slightly different by it. The definition you pick changes the number by 20% or more, and decides whether your service intervals work. [Read more](/content/journal/what-running-actually-means/index.html) - **Cellular backhaul, the unglamorous part of IoT** Everyone wants to talk about sensors and dashboards. The thing that decides whether your deployment works is the cellular link, and almost nobody designs it carefully enough. [Read more](/content/journal/cellular-backhaul/index.html) - **Why we don't name customers on our marketing site** There are two stories in every B2B deployment — the one the vendor wants told, and the one the customer actually lived. We default to neither. [Read more](/content/journal/why-we-dont-name-customers/index.html) - **LoRaWAN in the wild: notes from a few real deployments** Datasheets talk about 10-mile range and decade-long battery life. Fish farms, remote sites, and metal-heavy yards tell a different story. What we actually see in the field. [Read more](/content/journal/lorawan-in-the-wild/index.html) - **When predictive maintenance isn't magic** The industry loves to talk about AI + IoT for equipment management. Most of what actually ships in production is thresholds, trendlines, and someone willing to look at the dashboard. [Read more](/content/journal/predictive-maintenance-isnt-magic/index.html) - **MQTT at scale, field lessons** What we've actually learned running an MQTT pipeline in production — the mistakes we made, the instrumentation that saved us, and the parts of the protocol nobody warns you about. [Read more](/content/journal/mqtt-at-scale/index.html) - **Data pipelines without drama** Every IoT company eventually writes one. Every one of them is secretly held together by queues, dead-letter exchanges, and the hope that nothing fails at 3am. Here's what ours looks like, plainly. [Read more](/content/journal/data-pipelines-without-drama/index.html) - **What BLE tracking in a heavy-equipment yard actually looks like** A field note from a gateway install. Rust, forklifts, unexpected RF geometry, and what a 12km datasheet range means in a building made of steel. [Read more](/content/journal/ble-in-a-yard/index.html)