Scanning bar codes

By martinm, in DIY, october 02,2015.

At Yoctopuce, we take a picture of each package before we entrust it to the postal services, in case it gets lost during shipment. Up to now, we did this manually by chucking the package on a simple desktop scanner and we saved the file somewhere. But we got tired on this repetitive and completely uninteresting task. So we decided to automate the process...

PIR: a USB motion sensor

By martinm, in Measures and DIY, august 14,2015.

From time to time, we are asked whether Yoctopuce would be interested in building a USB motion sensor based on a PIR sensor. Let's kill the suspense right away: the answer is no, not at the present time. However, we can show you how to build one for a little bit more than the price of a Yocto-Serial.

A Solar, Waterproof and Wifi thermometer

By martinm, in Measures and DIY, july 17,2015.

Recently we had to build a device able to measure temperature on a roof. No electricity was available up there, the only technological stuff we could use was a wifi network. That project is not really original since the issues involved have been covered in the mail box and the weather station posts. However we though you would be interested in the box construction....

Splash photography

By martinm, in DIY and Programming, july 03,2015.

In the latest issue of Make, we found a nice article by Thomas Burg and Johannes Gottwald about splash photography. The principle behind this technique, often used for commercials, is to take a picture of an object while it dips into a liquid. This can produces stunning pictures. Of course, after reading that, we were eager to give it a try...

Creating crystals

By martinm, in DIY, may 22,2015.

One of us recently bought one of these scientific kits for children. Yes, at Yoctopuce, we still are big kids :-) The idea was to grow crystals, but frankly the result wasn't very convincing. We ended up with a pile of ridiculously small crystals at the bottom of a plastic cup. Nothing like what was promised on the box. We wondered if we could better the concept with some Yoctopuce modules. Let's see if we can do as well as Walter White...