The Yocto-Thermocouple and ground loops

By martinm, in Measures, december 30,2016.

From time to time, a customer contacts Yoctopuce support to complain about significant instabilities on measures performed with a Yocto-Thermocouple. Each time, the conclusion is the same: the instabilities are the result of an unwanted ground loop. The Yocto-Thermocouple is not an electrically isolated module: there is no electric separation between the measuring part and the USB part. This has consequences that you must clearly understand. This is what we are going to explain this week.

A new animated Advent window

By mvuilleu, in DIY, december 23,2016.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you might remember our 2014 Advent window, for which we created an animated landscape in shadow play. This year, we created a new animated Advent window, but based on a different principle: a drawing with UV on a phosphorescent surface, with the help of an embryonic robotic plotter.

Experimenting with Azure IoT Suite

By seb, in Internet of Things and Programming, december 16,2016.

Last year, Microsoft announced the Azure IoT Suite. Behind this somewhat pompous name hides two examples of use of their Azure cloud with connected objects. We are going to see how to use Yoctopuce modules in one of these two examples.

Yocto-Color, Neopixel and ping-pong balls

By martinm, in Internet of Things and DIY, december 09,2016.

This week, we present a small and quite simple DIY project based on the fact that white ping-pong balls make excellent light diffusers. We built a kind of multicolor chandelier, that you can drive through the Internet and which is PoE powered.

Logging and retrieving measures without network access

By mvuilleu, in Tiny PC and Measures, december 02,2016.

Even in the Internet of Things era, there are automation and measuring applications that require to work in a completely autonomous way, without any network connection of any kind. Someone asked us recently how to implement such an autonomous data logger using our sensors. The system should not require any network connection but use a USB key to retrieve the data. We are going to cover this example in details and at the same time take this opportunity to test a relatively new mini-computer that we recently discovered...