Any Device, Any Place, Any Application
Custom IoT solutions that connect vehicles, equipment, and property to give you real-time visibility instead of finding out about a problem after the fact.
How This Works
As a partner with OTG Consulting, I consult on what actually fits your business and connect you with the provider that delivers it. OTG is a consultancy that presents the services of other providers rather than delivering them itself.
The capabilities described on this page are delivered and supported by the service provider you select, not by Paul Petro IO or OTG Consulting. My role is helping you choose well and staying reachable after the contract is signed.
Connected devices are a data problem wearing a hardware costume. I built and ran a data warehousing and business intelligence company, and the pattern never changed: collecting the readings is straightforward, and deciding which reading is worth waking someone up for is the entire job. A fleet tracker that pings constantly gets ignored inside of a month.
On the security side my instinct comes from network operations, where anything that appears on the network without a clear owner deserves suspicion, and the cheap devices are usually the worst offenders. When I look at an IoT proposal I want three answers: what triggers an alert, what gets logged and left alone, and how these devices get patched two years from now when nobody remembers installing them.
Paul Petro · U.S. Marine Corps veteran, 25+ years in telecom and IT
Fleet Management & Property Monitoring
Fleet Tracking
GPS tracking, sensor monitoring, and engine diagnostics for tour vans, shuttle fleets, and delivery vehicles. Know where every vehicle is and how it's running.
Rental Property Sensors
Smart locks, leak detectors, and environmental monitoring so a maintenance issue gets caught before it becomes a guest complaint or a bigger repair bill.
Operational Visibility
Real-time insights across every connected device feed into better, faster decisions instead of a monthly report that's already out of date.
Every Connected Device Is a Door. We Lock Them.
Advanced encryption, continuous monitoring, and strong authentication protect every device on the network, with immediate detection and response if something looks off. More connected devices should not mean more risk.
Questions I Get About Connected Devices
Will trackers and sensors actually work across the whole island?
Coverage on Oahu is shaped by terrain more than by distance. The Koolau and Waianae ranges divide the island, and a device that reports reliably in Kapolei can behave very differently in a windward valley, on the leeward coast toward Waianae, or in the tunnels on the Pali, Likelike, and H-3. This is answerable before you buy anything. I ask a provider how devices behave when they lose signal: whether readings are stored locally and uploaded when coverage returns, or simply lost. For a fleet crossing the island several times a day, that one design decision determines whether your data has holes in it.
What is the real difference between a cheap tracker and a managed deployment?
The hardware is rarely the difference. The difference is what happens in year two: who patches the firmware, who notices when a device stops reporting, and who replaces the unit that failed in a truck parked in Waianae. Unmanaged deployments tend to decay quietly. Devices drop off one at a time, nobody is watching the total, and by the time somebody checks, a third of the fleet has been dark for months. When I look at a proposal I want the ongoing ownership named explicitly, not implied.
How many alerts is too many?
If your team has started ignoring them, you already have too many. This is the failure I have seen most often. A sensor set to notify on every threshold crossing trains people to dismiss the notification, and then the one that mattered gets dismissed with the rest. The useful exercise is deciding in advance what deserves waking someone up at 2am, what should wait for the morning, and what should only ever be a log entry nobody reads unless there is an investigation. Any provider worth using will push you to make those distinctions before installation, not after.
Are these devices a security risk on my network?
They can be, and the inexpensive ones usually are the weakest link. Many ship with default credentials and an open management interface, and they end up on the same network as your point-of-sale because that was the easiest place to put them. The fix is not complicated but it does have to be deliberate: connected devices on their own segment, credentials changed at install, and a documented plan for firmware updates. I treat a vendor who cannot describe their update process as a vendor who does not have one.
Is salt air a real problem for outdoor sensors?
Yes, and it is routinely underestimated in quotes written for mainland conditions. Equipment mounted near the water on the windward side or along the North Shore corrodes faster than the same equipment inland, and enclosure ratings that are adequate in Phoenix are not adequate in Kaneohe. I raise this during selection because replacement units have to ship here. A slightly better enclosure costs less than the freight and downtime on a device that fails eighteen months early.
Get in Touch
Reach out directly, or grab a time on the calendar, whichever's easier.
- (720) 915-0003
- paul.petro@otgconsulting.net
- Serving Oahu, the Hawaiian Islands, and the mainland US
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