Deployment
From site survey to live cycle data —
without a full SCADA project.
A Modulink deployment is a bounded piece of work with a known shape: a preflight questionnaire, an I/O map, an install, and a commissioning you can watch happen. Once your network and instruments are confirmed, the on-site work is measured in days — and this page tells you exactly what those days contain.
SCOPE, STATED PLAINLY — days on-site once network and instruments are confirmed · the preflight is what makes that true
The Process
Six steps. Most of them happen before anyone drives to your site.
Preflight questionnaire
Before anyone travels, we ask for four things. An instrument list — make, model, and output type for every sensor you want on a dashboard. Your network situation — for a plant, whether there is 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi or LAN reachable at the skid, who owns that network, and whether IT sign-off is needed. Power — where 9–36 V DC is available at each Terminal mounting point. And photos — the skid, the instrument panel, nameplates, and the spots where hardware will mount. This is what lets install day be measured in days, not weeks.
Radio and network decision
Instrumented plants get Terminal Indi: it joins your private on-site Wi-Fi or LAN (2.4 GHz) — no cloud, no SIM cards, nothing leaves the building. Open fields get Terminal Agri: LoRaWAN (US915) with 5 km open-air / 1 km indoor range and battery power, so there is no network or power run to a remote valve. Most water-treatment deployments are Indi. The architecture is the same either way — one Base Station, mixed fleets supported.
How the platform fits togetherI/O mapping
We produce a shared I/O map before install: every instrument assigned to a named Terminal channel. Each Terminal Indi reads two 4-20 mA loop instruments plus 0–3.3 V signals; dry-contact outputs run through a relay on the actuator output. Scaling from raw loop current to engineering units is configured at the Base Station, so a calibration change never means climbing back onto the skid. If you need readings pushed to an existing SCADA or PLC, Modbus TCP is available as a Base Station integration — it is not a Terminal hardware feature, and we scope it here.
Install
Terminals mount at the skid and wire to your existing 4-20 mA loop instruments — your transmitters, flow meters, and probes stay exactly where they are. Every landed wire is labeled against the I/O map, so the map on the wall matches the map in the software. The Base Station — one ARM64 server per site — goes on a shelf or in a rack with power and network access. No panel rebuild, no PLC replacement, no new conduit runs beyond the loops on the map.
Commissioning
When a Terminal Indi powers up and can’t reach a known network, it opens its own setup network — join it from a phone or laptop, enter your site Wi-Fi credentials in the captive portal, and it drops onto your network. Reconfiguration works the same way, so a changed Wi-Fi password never requires a truck roll. Once on the network, provisioning to the Base Station is zero-touch: the Terminal registers itself and starts reporting without manual per-device setup.
Test and operator handoff
Before we leave, every channel is verified live against the field gauge or panel reading it duplicates, and alerts are exercised end to end. We create operator accounts with role-based access — admin, operator, viewer — and walk your operators through the dashboard on their own equipment. You keep the admin credentials. It’s your server, on your site, and it runs whether or not we’re in the building.
Timeline honesty: “days on-site” is a claim about steps 04–06, and it holds when steps 01–03 are done. Sites that skip the preflight discover network problems on install day — which is why we won’t skip it.
What an install looks like
Terminal wired to existing loop instruments
Existing panels stay in place
Live data at handoff, on your server
After Handoff
Support and updates,
honestly framed.
Self-hosted means nothing updates behind your back. It also means updates are something we do with you, not to you.
- Software updates are scheduled, not silent. The platform has no phone-home, so nothing auto-updates from a vendor cloud. Base Station updates are applied on-site or over your network, on a schedule you approve — change-management stays in your hands.
- Terminal reconfiguration doesn’t need a visit. Changed Wi-Fi credentials are handled through the Terminal’s own setup network — no truck roll. Terminal firmware updates are coordinated with us as part of support; we don’t claim one-click fleet updates.
- Backup and recovery are part of handoff. The Base Station ships with backup and restore procedures, and we walk your team through them — your data lives on your hardware, so protecting it is a shared, documented job.
- Engineering help is by the hour. Support beyond the deployment scope — new integrations, additional instruments, expansion planning — is billed at $200/hr, as needed.
- Licenses degrade, they don’t disable. If a Skill license lapses, that Skill goes read-only. The platform keeps running — it never bricks.
Your Side of the Table
What we need from you.
Network access
Wi-Fi credentials or a LAN drop reachable at the skid — and IT sign-off if the network isn’t yours to grant.
Power
9–36 V DC at each Terminal Indi mounting point, and mains power plus network for the Base Station.
Working instruments
We read your existing 4-20 mA loops. Instrument health and calibration remain yours — we surface what the loop reports.
A person on-site
A point of contact during install days who can answer where things are and approve mounting locations.
A home for the Base Station
Shelf or rack space in a reasonable environment, with power and access to the same network as the Terminals.
Exclusions
What a deployment is not.
We don’t rip out instruments or PLCs
Modulink wires to the loops you already have and runs alongside your existing control system. Your transmitters, panels, and PLCs stay in place and in charge of what they were in charge of yesterday.
Not a safety system
Modulink actuation is non-safety-critical control. Safety trips run locally in Terminal firmware — never over the radio — and Modulink is not a substitute for safety interlocks, relief valves, or a safety instrumented system. Your existing safety systems stay untouched.
No cloud migration
There is no vendor cloud to onboard into. Everything installs on your site, and no telemetry leaves it unless you send it.
No open-ended rewiring
Scope is the instruments on the agreed I/O map. Plant-wide rewiring, new instrument procurement, and panel fabrication are separate engineering work, quoted separately.
Go Deeper
The rest of the picture.
RO/CIP Pilot
A bounded pilot on your cleaning skids — the fastest way to see this process run end to end.
Terminal Indi
The Wi-Fi/LAN Terminal this page describes: 2× 4-20 mA inputs, actuator output, 9–36 V power.
Security & Data Ownership
Self-hosted, single-tenant, air-gap capable — what that means for your IT review.
Water Treatment
Why RO membrane cleaning is where Modulink runs in production today.
Start with the preflight.
Send us your instrument list and a few photos, and we’ll come back with an I/O map and a scoped plan — before anyone books travel.
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