FreeMaint Connect: sensors that open work orders

Why connect sensors to the maintenance system, not to another dashboard

Most sensor projects stop at a chart. Somebody installs a temperature probe or an energy meter, a supplier dashboard shows nice curves, and six months later nobody opens it. The value of a measurement is in the action it starts: a technician sent to the compressor that runs hot, a filter changed because the fan has run its hours, a leak found because the night consumption doubled.

Those actions already live in the CMMS: assets, work orders, preventive plans, the technician’s phone. FreeMaint Connect puts the measurement in the same place, attached to the same asset, so a value that leaves its range follows the same path as a request from a colleague — assigned, tracked and closed with notes and photos.

• Measurements attached to the asset they describe
• Alerts that create work orders instead of emails nobody reads
• Meter-based plans fed by real run hours, not estimates
• Energy cost and CO2 per meter without retyping readings

Which devices work today

FreeMaint sells no hardware. It connects devices you buy from their manufacturer or already own. Seven models are recognised and decoded by FreeMaint itself: the Shelly Pro 3EM, EM Gen3, Pro EM-50, Plug S Gen3 and 1PM Gen3 energy meters, plugs and relays over Wi-Fi or Ethernet; the Milesight CT101 LoRaWAN current transformer; and the Milesight EM300-TH LoRaWAN temperature and humidity sensor. They carry the Compatible badge, which means they were validated against the manufacturer’s documentation.

Other devices work too. Any other LoRaWAN sensor arrives when your network server decodes it, and anything that can send JSON over HTTP — Node-RED, Home Assistant, a gateway reading a Modbus meter, a PLC or a short script — feeds FreeMaint through the HTTP API. FreeMaint does not speak Modbus, MQTT, BACnet or OPC UA directly; a gateway in between translates.

From a measurement to a closed work order

Every measurement of a device becomes a channel: the power of phase A, a temperature, a current. A channel keeps its history, shown point by point for recent data and as averages over longer periods, from six hours to a year. A multiplier and an offset correct a current-transformer ratio or a sensor bias.

An alert rule watches one channel. A threshold rule can hold the condition for a few seconds before raising an alert and use a margin to clear, so a value hovering around the limit does not flap. When the alert opens, the roles chosen in the notification settings receive it in the app and on their phone; critical alerts also go by email. If the rule asks for it — and, for a vibration-zone rule, only in zone D — a work order is created on the asset, and reused if one from the same rule is still open. When the value returns to normal, the alert closes by itself; the work order stays open until someone has checked the machine.

Plans, limits and what Connect is not

FreeMaint Connect is part of the Business plan, at $99 per month per company, flat. It includes 100 active channels; the Enterprise plan includes 5,000. An inactive channel does not count. Data you already collected stays visible on every plan, including the free Core tier.

Connect is not a SCADA system and does not control equipment. Remote commands, schedules and load shedding belong to the energy control features of the Enterprise plan, which always ask for confirmation. Connect is also not a vibration-analysis suite: it raises alerts on vibration values against the ISO 20816 zones you enter, but no vibration sensor is decoded natively yet.