Josephine, the USB coffee machine (part II)

By martinm, in DIY, december 09,2011.

Do you remember Joséphine, our USB coffee machine? We noticed it was almost always doing an automatic shutdown right when we wanted a coffee. So we have decided to make an upgrade: in addition to remote controlling the coffee function, we will be able to remotely power it on or off, and to choose between a large and a small coffee. All this will be done with forty lines of code, including the user interface.

Lets evaluate the situation

By martinm, in Misc, december 02,2011.

Yoctopuce company started 8 eight months ago, and the online shop is still closed. You may be wondering what we are doing. Well, to make it simple: we are almost there. Organizing and building all this stuff just took twice the time that we expected. More details after the break.

Update (dec 13): Here we are, the shop is now open !

A USB weather measurement station

By mvuilleu, in DIY, november 25,2011.

This week we will illustrate the use of PHP with our USB sensors on a very classical example: recording weather parameters (temperature and humidity). Nothing really special, but this very basic example demonstrates the advantage of easily accessing USB modules from a language like PHP. Thanks to the numerous libraries and ease of use of the language, real-world application can be built real fast.

USB catapult

By martinm, in DIY, november 18,2011.

Do you remember throwing peas using a spoon when you were a kid, at the school cafeteria ? Well, we wanted to try it again, but this time in a more sophisticated and cleaner manner. The idea is to build a little catapult, remotely controlled by USB. For that, we used a YoctoServo, two RC servos and a few rubber bands. The rest is only a matter of mechanical design :-)

Birth of an USB module (part 3)

By mvuilleu, in Electronics, november 11,2011.

After the presentation of the design and prototyping of our products, here comes the production stage, with a new video!

In order to make the final printed board, we reuse the circuit of the last validated prototype and use panelization: the circuit is replicated a few dozens of times on a single larger board, in order to build as many modules as possible at once.