\chapter{Abstract}
The availability of powerful commercial hardware in recent years has enabled not only the potential to reduce costs, but also allowed for the integration of the conventional software development methods of Industrial IoT. To test the viability of these products and methods, this project concerns itself with developing a cheaper and easier-to-install alternative to the conventional belt scales used for measuring the volume of bulk material on industrial conveyor belts.

Previous research has shown that optical and laser-based methods for measuring the volume of bulk material are indeed possible, but only through the use of research-grade or industrial-grade equipment. This work demonstrates---through the development of a prototype with the accompanying software---that a system using the Intel RealSense L515 and a Raspberry Pi has the required performance to run the required analysis, and deliver those results over Industrial Ethernet to conventional industrial PLCs.

Although a fully-functional product was not realized due to the unsuitable optical properties of the tested conveyor belt, the system is capable enough to deliver results in a laboratory setting. More work is required to further fine-tune the signal pre-processing issues in the field.