Blog - Kliskatek

The three questions that qualify a maintenance round for NFC sensor tags: does somebody already walk the route, does the value change more slowly than the round interval, and can a person reach the point with a phone. A tap removes transcription and proves presence within about two centimetres, but the tag harvests energy only while the phone field is present, so nothing is recorded between rounds.

NFC Maintenance Rounds: When to Put Sensors on Your Route

2026-08-03 by Mikel Choperena

NFC maintenance rounds do not replace the walk, they change what it produces. Three questions decide whether your inspection route is a candidate

Diagram of the four RF decisions an OEM has to lock in before the mechanical design freezes when embedding a battery-free sensor. Before the freeze, while it is still a drawing revision: the reader plane (where the reader sits, who holds it and how often it reads, which sets the energy budget — about 30 µW at 5 m over UHF against 10 mW at 5 cm over NFC); the RF window (metal does not pass RF, so the aperture is a mechanical decision made with the enclosure concept); the material stack (potting, paint, gaskets and distance to metal, against which the antenna must be tuned); and the end-of-line test (a fixed, repeatable read geometry that records margin rather than pass or fail). After tooling, firmware, commissioning and reader integration are still open, while aperture location and size, antenna tuning, read distance and where the sensor sits are closed, recoverable only at the price of a tool.

Embedding Sensors During Manufacturing: RF Guidelines

2026-07-272026-07-27 by Mikel Choperena

Designing a battery-free sensor into your product? The RF, enclosure and end-of-line test decisions OEMs must lock in before the mechanical design freezes.

Three roadmap strategies for supporting wireless protocols in a battery-free product — commit to one protocol (single market, lowest cost, the right default); ship one but keep the sensing core reusable (recommended when a second market is plausible; add a radio later, not a redesign); and plan a multi-protocol line (two or more funded markets, highest cost, justified only when the markets are real) — with a shared sensing core making options two and three affordable.

One Protocol or Several? The Roadmap Decision Behind a Battery-Free Product

2026-07-20 by Mikel Choperena

Should a battery-free product commit to one wireless protocol or plan for several? A roadmap framework — and what adding a protocol later really costs.

From stuck to scoped: three "stuck" situations — a project stalled across vendors, a capability gap just hit, and a system built but not behaving — flow through a short paid scoping study into four "scoped" outputs: an architecture proposal, a realistic plan with an investment range, an integration-risk map, and an honest go/no-go recommendation

From Stuck to Scoped: How a Paid Scoping Study De-Risks a Cross-Domain Project

2026-07-13 by Mikel Choperena

A paid scoping study turns a stalled cross-domain project into an architecture, a costed plan and an honest go/no-go — the lowest-risk way to start before you commit.

Two-panel diagram comparing periodic inspection and condition-based maintenance of a high-voltage asset: on the left, calendar-based inspections miss a fault that develops in the blind window between visits; on the right, continuous battery-free condition monitoring catches the same fault at the action threshold and triggers intervention before failure.

Condition-Based Maintenance vs Periodic Inspection: The Business Case for Utilities

2026-07-132026-07-06 by Mikel Choperena

Condition-based maintenance vs periodic inspection for HV switchgear: what each really costs, and how to build a business case utilities will actually sign.

Diagram of battery-free SF6 monitoring in gas-insulated switchgear: a battery-free sensor inside the sealed gas compartment measures pressure/density and humidity and is read from outside via an engineered RF path (a gas-tight feedthrough or a dielectric window), feeding leak alerts and F-gas compliance data into asset management.

SF6 Monitoring Without Batteries: Pressure & Humidity in Gas-Insulated Equipment

2026-06-29 by Mikel Choperena

Battery-free sensors track SF6 density and humidity inside sealed gas-insulated switchgear — no wires through the gas boundary, no batteries. How it works, and why F-gas rules make it matter now.

Diagram of battery-free busbar hot-spot monitoring inside a switchgear cabinet: SenseID temperature tags mounted on busbar joints detect a hot spot, are read by a UHF RFID reader, and feed per-joint temperature into asset management (CMMS/SCADA).

Battery-Free Temperature Monitoring for Switchgear: Busbar Hot Spot Detection

2026-06-22 by Mikel Choperena

Battery-free temperature sensors detect busbar hot spots inside live switchgear — no wires, no batteries. How it works, which protocol to choose, and the business case.

Two-panel diagram showing HV asset constraints on the left (sealed, high voltage, long lifecycle, mission-critical, no cables, no batteries) and the seven cross-domain engineering challenges on the right (antenna, energy harvesting, power management, sensor, firmware, communication, software), with a section explaining why the system can't be split across specialists.

Predictive Monitoring for High-Voltage Equipment: Where Owning the Whole System Is the Only Option

2026-06-222026-06-16 by Mikel Choperena

High-voltage switchgear, GIS and transformers are sealed, inaccessible, and mission-critical. Monitoring them requires battery-free sensing — and battery-free sensing requires a team that owns the entire HW/FW/SW/RF stack. Here’s why.

Seven engineering domains radiating from a battery-free sensor tag at the centre — antenna/RF, energy harvesting, power management, firmware, sensor signal conditioning, communication, and software/SDK — showing how each domain interacts with all others, with an arrow pointing to four other cross-domain project types (semiconductor test platforms, industrial test equipment, wireless product development, condition monitoring) that require the same integrated capability.

Why We Build Battery-Free Sensors: The Hardest Proof of Owning the Whole RF/Firmware/Software Stack

2026-06-222026-06-08 by Mikel Choperena

Battery-free sensors are our hardest product — and the most demanding proof that we own the complete hardware, firmware, software and wireless/RF stack. Here’s why that matters for your next cross-domain project.