Sensor Networking Cost Model
Are the high costs of deploying cabling in your industrial environment preventing you from deploying a remote sensor monitoring solution?
Cable lengths of 200 ft (60m) are commonly used to install industrial wired sensor monitoring systems:
- $15ft1 ($50/m) for bare cable & installation
- $35ft2 ($115/m) bare cable deployed on cable tray or ladder rack
- > $100ft3 ($330/m) deployed in rigid steel conduit
- A 200ft deployed wiring solution can cost from $3000 to over $20,000 for a single run including materials and labor
- Cabling costs can greatly increase with other common factors: Cost greatly increase if the cabling needs to extend outdoors where you need to trench, deal with right of way issues, resurface existing pavement
1 Labor cost $60/hr per NECA; 2 EATON ; 3 Electrical Contractor Reference
Have you considered a Reliable, Multi-path, Wireless mesh Networking Solution?
Here is a comparison of traditional wired sensor network installation vs a Wzzard wireless system. The assumptions for this comparison are as follows:
20 sensor network capable of monitoring 10 machines with 2 Sensors per machine with a centralized controller at an average distance of 150 ft to each sensor.
Cost of deploying a conventional “Wired” Sensor Network
System Costs Include:
- PLC material & Installation
- PLC programming
- Cable & install 150ft (46m) average cable distance
- System Commissioning and validation
- Electrical Design
- Total Project Cost – $36,000
The main cost of a sensor monitoring system isn’t the system; it’s the cabling deployment & Installation costs.
Cost of Deploying Wzzard Wireless Sensor Network
System Costs Include:
- Wzzard Gateway & Install
- 12 Wzzard Edge Nodes
- 20 Sensors & Installation
- System Commissioning and Validation
- Web-Based monitoring system w/data storage, Alert messages, Dashboards
- Total Project Cost – $15,000
Sensor Network System Cost Summary

Wzzard Savings over traditional wired sensor network from 60% to over 90%!
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