RST Instruments of Maple Ridge, British Columbia and Measurand of Fredericton, New Brunswick have recently collaborated on the development of a low power wireless solution for deformation monitoring. RST Instruments is a leading manufacturer of geotechnical instrumentation and dataloggers including the RSTAR line of wireless datalogging nodes for vibrating wire (VW) instruments such as piezometers and extensometers and MEMS instruments such as inclinometers.

These instruments are deployed on numerous tailings dams around the world with most of them being already upgraded to automated monitoring using RSTAR nodes. Measurand is the manufacturer of the innovative deformation monitoring ShapeArray which is used for automatic monitoring of horizontal and vertical displacements in new and existing casings. The ShapeArray has recently been improved to allow a direct installation in existing inclinometer casings using the patented cyclical installation method, allowing the salvage of casings that could otherwise not be used due to excessive deformation.

RST Instruments and Measurand are now introducing a new RSTAR wireless datalogging node: the DT ShapeArray that reads, stores, and transmits measurements from ShapeArrays, thereby eliminating the previous need to interface the ShapeArray to a central more costly data acquisition system with long cables. The new wireless node maintains the same low power and low-cost features of the DT logger family e.g. operating temperature of -40°C to 60°C and multi-year battery life.

The new DT ShapeArray adds to the versatility of wireless datalogging and telemetry options available to monitor the stability of open pit mines and tailings dams. A typical network featuring RSTAR nodes, a central Datalogger Hub and telemetry options such as Wi-Fi, cell or satellite modem to a cloud database or corporate server is presented in the below image.