Stack Light Monitoring AI

Read every stack light's color and blink pattern from a camera, and log machine state, faults, and downtime on equipment with no PLC data.

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AI object detection labels the status lights of three factory machines: two green and one blinking red.

Stack Light Monitoring AI for the Toughest Mixed-Age, Multi-Vendor Production Floors

  • Deploy Anywhere, Run Everywhere

    Run stack light monitoring on cell, line, and ceiling cameras, with one camera watching several machines, on the edge, on-prem, in your VPC, or via API.

  • One Platform, Full Adoption

    Tools every operations team can adopt, from plant managers and maintenance planners to line supervisors and continuous improvement leads, no separate ML team required.

  • Secure, Compliant, and Audit-Ready

    Data stays safe with SOC 2 Type II compliance, encrypted data, HIPAA compliance, and an uptime SLA, with a timestamped state record for every machine.

  • Red, Yellow & Green State Detection
  • Steady vs. Blinking Light Patterns
  • Fault & Alarm Duration
  • Idle and Waiting-for-Operator Time
  • Multi-Machine Coverage from One Camera
  • Downtime Logs on Legacy Equipment
“Roboflow has been instrumental in accelerating our deployment of innovative AI solutions.”

Travis Turnbull

Vice President & CIO, Pella Corporation

Talk to a Vision AI engineer who's shipped in discrete and process manufacturing.

Bring us your toughest machine visibility problem and we'll map a working solution.

Ask us about:

  • Solution architecture that fits your machines, stack light conventions, and existing OEE, MES, and historian stack
  • A live demo on your own machine or cell camera footage
  • Deployment options: edge, on-prem, air-gapped, VPC, or on the cameras already on your floor
  • ROI modeling against unrecorded downtime, response time to faults, and the cost of retrofitting machines with sensors

Over 80,000 organizations build with Roboflow.

  • Rivian
  • Pella
  • Chobani
  • USG Corporation
  • BNSF Railway
  • American Woodmark
Start where you are

Vision AI is transforming businesses

Customers across the board are solving complex challenges and driving meaningful impact.

  • Automotive customer

    $10 million

    Saved by automatically detecting defects on the production line

  • Logistics & freight company

    90%

    Less time spent manually tracking shipping inventory

  • Building materials supplier

    60%

    Lower customer return rate with improved product quality

Read Every Stack Light, from the First Machine to the Last Shift

Turn the stack lights already on your machines into live machine data with Roboflow vision AI for stack light monitoring.

Reading the light:

  • Detect which tier of each stack light is lit, red, yellow, green, blue, or white, with a model trained on your own machines, lighting, and camera angles.
  • Tell a steady light from a blinking one by sampling frames over time, so a flashing alarm and a steady warning are logged as different states.
  • Map each color and pattern to the meaning your plant uses, such as running, waiting for operator, material shortage, or fault, since conventions differ by machine and site.

Turning lights into downtime data:

  • Build a state timeline for every machine and measure how long each fault, idle, and waiting state lasted, shift by shift.
  • Watch several machines from one camera, so a cell of older equipment gets state tracking without a sensor on each machine.
  • Feed machine states into OEE monitoring so availability comes from the machine itself, not a clipboard.

Acting on it:

  • Alert maintenance or the line lead when a red or blinking light stays on past a set time, with the clip and machine name attached.
  • Pair stack light state with what the camera sees on the line, such as a conveyor jam or an empty infeed, so each stop carries its likely cause.
  • Trend fault frequency by machine and shift to find the equipment that alarms most, as part of predictive maintenance.

Bring intelligence to every stack light today. Stop a red light from turning into an hour of lost production nobody recorded.

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Frequently asked questions

What is stack light monitoring with Vision AI?

Stack light monitoring with Vision AI uses a camera and a trained computer vision model (opens in a new tab) to read the color and blink state of the signal towers on your machines, turn them into a timestamped machine state, and log faults, idle time, and downtime. It works alongside cycle time monitoring and OEE monitoring on the same cameras.

Can it tell a blinking light from a steady one?

Yes. The model reads the state of each tier on every frame, and Workflow logic looks at the pattern over a short window of time, so a light that switches on and off is logged as blinking and one that stays on is logged as steady. Each pattern can carry its own meaning and alert rule.

Why use a camera instead of wiring into the stack light or PLC?

A camera needs no rewiring, no machine downtime to install, and no integration per machine vendor, and one camera can cover a whole cell. That makes it the fastest way to get state data from older machines with no network connection. Where a PLC already reports state, the camera adds a clip of what happened at each stop.

Roboflow serves as the measurement engine, and your operations and maintenance teams own the color meanings, alert times, and downtime categories.

Can it integrate with our MES, historian, and OEE dashboards?

Yes. Roboflow sends machine states and events over MQTT, OPC UA, or REST (opens in a new tab), or writes them to a database, so they feed MES, historians, and OEE platforms such as Ignition and AVEVA PI, and can be written to a PLC tag. Models run on edge hardware on the floor, on-prem, or in your VPC.

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