Patent ID: 7521945

Claim:
An oil quality monitoring system, comprising: a sensing element mounted in a drain plug, the sensing element configured to generate oil measurement data associated with oil quality of a monitored oil sample, the sensing element comprising: a housing, a plurality of chambers within the housing, a wire tracing individually coupled to each of the plurality of chambers, and a cable connector pin individually coupled to each of the individual wire tracings by an output connector, wherein each cable connector pin extends outward from the drain plug and couples the sensing element to a monitoring device via a data cable and provides the oil measurement data generated by the plurality of chambers to the monitoring device via the wire tracings and intermediate output connectors; and a monitoring device coupled to the sensing element, the monitoring device comprising a software module executable by a processor to differentially analyze the oil measurement data generated by the sensing element, and wherein the oil monitoring device is configured to display an indicia of oil quality of the monitored oil sample in a user interface based on the differential analysis of the oil measurement data.