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 :-)

Our USB mailbox (You've Got Mail revisited)

By Sébastien Rinsoz, in DIY, november 05,2011.

This week, we will spend less time hacking and more time on the programming API, in particular on the use of USB modules from C++. The goal is to enhance our old mailbox in order to get a notification when the postman has come, in order to stay in the warm and get the mail as soon as it is here. Since this post is a bit longer than usual, if you feel lazy, feel free to skip straight to the end of the post and look at the video demo.

Outdor electronic projects

By martinm, in DIY, october 28,2011.

When we start thinking about an outdoor electronic project, some new problems appears. The worst one is humidity, everyone knows that electric stuff does not like water. Fortunately, there are ways to make an electric device work outdoor. This article explains some techniques to help you use Yoctopuce devices in the wild.

The USB Pumpkin in the Cloud

By martinm, in DIY, october 21,2011.

Getting into Halloween time, we thought it could be fun to show a Yocto-Color used within a pumpkin, and to use its RGB leds to change the pumpkin color. Nothing really special, actually. To make it a bit more challenging, we thought that it would look much better if we could have some kind of cloud floating around the pumpkin. Forget the small demo that we had originally planned, our pumpkin just bubbled into a big overkill...

Pimp My Mouse

By martinm, in DIY, october 14,2011.

Today’s article is about a useless, but nevertheless quite impressive piece of fun. Gamers know the excellent Razer mouses, mostly known for their precision, but also for their typical illumination inside the mouse. However, this illumination cannot be controlled. Hence the idea to put a Yocto-Color module inside the mouse, to be able to dynamically change the mouse color using our USB-driven RGB leds. More details and even a video after the break...