The USB-C migration of Yoctopuce products is progressing slowly but surely. We are even beginning to see the end of it. This week, we present the Yocto-Knob-C and the Yocto-RS485-V2-C. Let's take a closer look...
The Yocto-Knob-C
The Yocto-Knob-C is the USB-C version of the Yocto-Knob, one of the very first products marketed by Yoctopuce. This small, simple, and inexpensive module is designed to allow you to easily interface with switches, push buttons, and other potentiometers, and thus build physical user interfaces such as a joystick. Over the years, we realized that there were other less intuitive applications, such as building light barriers using phototransistors, interfacing relays, or even NPN sensors.
The USB-C version of the Yocto-Knob
If you're wondering how much this new evolution of the old module will cost you, don't worry: the Yocto-Knob-C is priced at CHF 30.95, which is 30 centimes more than the original Micro-B version.
The Yocto-RS485-V2-C
The Yocto-RS485-V2-C is a small module that allows you to communicate on an RS485 bus, for interfacing RS485 sensors, as you might expect. RS485 is an old industrial communication standard that may seem a bit outdated in an era where everyone swears by wireless technology, but there are still quite a few systems that use this mode of communication. If you have ever worked with an RS485 bus, you probably know that whenever a document mentions RS485, the MODBUS protocol is never far away. That's good news, because the Yocto-RS485-V2-C allows you to easily use this protocol by calculating the correct frames to send and automatically decoding the received frames.
Note that the Yocto-RS485-V2-C is an isolated module, so you can safely interface installations that are not necessarily using the same ground as your USB bus.
You can also use the Yocto-RS485-V2-C to analyze MODBUS communications passing through an RS485 bus. Yoctopuce even offers a small tool that allows you to easily view these communications. This is quite handy if you need to do some reverse engineering on an existing installation.
There is also a less intuitive but quite spectacular application for the Yocto-RS485-V2-C: this small module can perfectly interface with DMX512 standard devices, which are widely used in the technical side of the performing arts.
The new Yocto-RS485-V2-C
After calculating the price of the Yocto-RS485-V2-C as three times its component cost, we realized that the production cost of the Yocto-RS485-V2 had dropped slightly, so we lowered the price of the Yocto-RS485-V2 to CHF 78.50 and set the price of the Yocto-RS485-V2-C at CHF 78.70.
