Let me be real with you.
I'm a field technician. I've been crawling through manufacturing plants, troubleshooting PLCs, and diagnosing faults on equipment that costs more than most people's houses. For years.
And you know what I noticed? Every single time a machine goes down, the plant manager does the same thing: calls a $200/hour consultant who Googles the fault code, reads the manual, and charges you for 4 hours minimum.
That's not expertise. That's a racket.
So I Built Something About It
I built IndAutomation — an AI diagnostic tool with 313 industrial fault codes baked in. Allen-Bradley, Siemens, ABB, Fanuc, Mitsubishi. The stuff that actually runs American manufacturing.
You punch in your fault code or describe what's happening, and it gives you:
- Root cause analysis
- Step-by-step troubleshooting
- Parts you'll actually need
- Safety warnings that matter
No scheduling a consultant. No waiting 3 days for someone to fly in. No $800 invoices for someone to tell you to "check the wiring."
The Numbers Don't Lie
ServiceTitan charges $500/tech/month minimum. Most diagnostic platforms want $200+ just to access their database.
IndAutomation is $19/month. That's not a typo.
Why? Because I'm not a VC-funded startup trying to extract maximum revenue before the Series B. I'm a guy who builds tools he actually uses every day on the job. I eat my own cooking.
Who This Is For
- Maintenance techs who are tired of waiting for "the expert"
- Plant managers who want to cut diagnostic time by 80%
- Independent contractors who need answers at 2 AM when nobody's picking up the phone
- Anyone who thinks paying $200/hr for someone to read a manual is insane
The Tech (For You Dev.to Nerds)
FastAPI backend. Jinja2 templates. Local LLM inference via LM Studio for the heavy lifting. SQLite for persistence. MCP tool integration for 8 different diagnostic workflows.
No cloud dependency for the AI inference. Your fault data doesn't get shipped to OpenAI or Google. It stays local.
Stripe handles billing. That's it. Simple stack, simple pricing, works every time.
Try It
https://indautomation.onrender.com
Free tier available. Pro is $19/mo. Enterprise is $49/mo with priority support and custom fault libraries.
I'm not going to tell you it's going to replace every technician. But I will tell you it's going to make the good ones faster and make the overpriced consultants nervous.
That's the whole point.
Built by a field tech, for field techs. No venture capital. No bloat. Just works.
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