Experience

Black Sand Technology is a small group of oilfield professionals with 70+ years combined experience.  As we did in the field for 60+ years on the drilling side, we strive to deliver efficient, timely and safe solutions that maximize goals and ROI.

BST has decades of software development in the gaming, oilfield and medical fields, yielding a meaningful, solid, diverse and agile development team.

Experience

Working in the oilfield for many decades, we have seen the transition from brake handle rigs to current high spec connected rigs.  Even though the industry has evolved, we can still draw on experience to benefit our clients.

The majority of the team possesses engineering degrees with the remainder having geology and mineral related degrees.  All have worked in the field for decades on the drilling side from MWD to WSS.  Cementing, hydraulic fracturing and coil tubing are some of the other service lines we have worked in for summer jobs and internships.

Geographic

We have worked offshore from the North Sea to Brazil and Alaska.

On land, we have worked from the UK to South America to Alaska and many basins in between.

Industries

We are not just limited to the oilfield.  What has been learned in other industries brings a broader and more effective perspective to drive solutions.  Designing software for use in the medical field demonstrates we can manage data privacy and comply with regulations such as HIPAA.  Our work in the gaming field has shown we can handle large amounts of data while satisfying the requirements of precise timing.

Commitment

After sales and installation, our relationship doesn't stop.  Do not hesitate to contact us.

Our philosopy

Design Principles

IIOT is a wide, complex and ever evolving field that combines many varied disciplines.

Are pure coders without hands on experience what you want?  Field work is demanding, intensive and indispensable.  However, those in the field may be able to solve problems but lack the ability to conceptualize them into algorithms.

Having done both coding and field work, we bring context and solutions that others miss.

Simple elegance

Complex problems are best solved by keeping them simple and effective.  Our design goals are to break things down into individual nodes to solve them  while and keep things working effectively as a system.

Data security

Your data is your data and should stay that way.

Encryption

Our designs integrate industry standards and best practices from start to finish.

Noise

Our solutions are designed and implemented to get you precise and actionable data.  Too much meaningless data is counter productive as needed information will get lost in the noise.

Bandwidth

Having worked remote for decades and living in rural setting, our team knows how to design and compensate for less than ideal communication regimes.

Timely

Data should be collected in a manner that it is actionable, whether in real-time or historic.  Simply having a data point with no timestamp makes it impossible to correlate it with events.  You may have an event, but is it even actionable?

Software

Software is the glue that brings all the pieces of our systems together.  Without effective design and implementation, be catastrophic for ignition events and regulatory fines.

Coding

Our CTO began his coding career in the early 80s with an Apple II when his parents got one for Christmas.

This has expanded to Python, PHP, Unity/C#, database optimization, backend work and system integration.

Limited resources

Through the use of algorithms and effective caching, needed data is provided in a timely manner through low bandwidth connections.

Multithreading

Multiprocessing allows us to constantly acquire and present data that allows high performance using edge computing.

Most core software systems are written in Python.  To make the system operate as designed and expected in the field, it makes use of multiprocessing and multithreading.  It is vastly more difficult than single threaded Python, but is what is required to have a powerful and extensible system.

Consistent output

Our systems provide consistent and manageable data in industry formats.  One should spend more time analyzing data than figuring out how to import it.

We have worked on the receiving end of data to parse and analyze during our time in the oilfield.  Data of poorly organized and changing format is not acceptable.  Data is meant to be collected and analyzed, not sanitized.

One time in particular sticks out where we were receiving CSV data.  The data had varying amount of column depending on the situation.  Headers were not at the start of the file, but randomly spread around the file.

Extensible and flexible

The system has been designed from the start to operate in a distributed manner.  A sensor doesn't need to know where it is sending data nor does it need to know about other sensors.  Well designed data acquisition systems should be able to collect and transmit data in varying formats and by needed means that match the situation.  Data transmission modules do not need to be concerned with other ones. 

Through effective use of multiprocessing and distributed design, we can meet your needs.

Single threaded solutions

Poor and single threaded designs can cause side effects one has to experience.  We did not need to see the source code or talk to the coder to identify what had been done.  We were tasked with importing and analyzing data from an engineer.  At the top of the hour the acquisition stopped and resumed after the file was uploaded to Dropbox.

Consultants

Through our industry and gaming connections, we have access to a diverse and accomplished group of committed professionals that we can utilize to present advanced solutions

This website stores cookies on your computer. Cookie Policy

error: Content is protected !!