Controlled-environment cultivation

By martinm, in Internet of Things and Measures, april 11,2014.

As illustrated in a previous post, you need only a few Yoctopuce modules and a very simple logic to regulate an environmental factor such as humidity. Starting from there, why not generalize the principle and produce an environment fully optimized for a specific aim, such as growing plants? We decided to test this principle to grow mushrooms. Mushrooms, rather than tomatoes or pumpkins, because mushrooms grow fast and in the dark. It's therefore quite easy to make a time-lapse of their growing if you control lighting well...

A network humidifier in an afternoon

By Sébastien Rinsoz, in Internet of Things, march 13,2014.

When we founded Yoctopuce, one of the aims was to provide a fast, easy, and reliable solution for any geek DIY (controlling the coffee machine from your computer, knowing when to fetch the mail, and so on). Other solutions were already available, but none was simple enough for everything to work in half a day. This week, we had to quickly install a system to control humidity in a bedroom, and we had only an afternoon to do it. Here is what we did...

The return of the Yoctopuce mailbox

By martinm, in Internet of Things and DIY, february 21,2014.

Do you remember the laser mailbox? It works quite well, but we noticed a very annoying defect. Because the mailbox is made of metal sheets, it tends to slightly deform itself depending on temperature changes. This deformation changes the laser beam trajectory inside the box, sometimes to the point of bringing it off the light sensor target. Therefore, we had to regularly adjust the mailbox to solve this issue. After a while, we had enough and we came up with another idea to fix this. But this time, we are seeing big: we are going to render our mailbox autonomous thanks to a solar panel and a Wifi connection.

Building a MIDI automatic organ

By mvuilleu, in Internet of Things, january 24,2014.

Among the precursors of today's automatic systems, we have the magnificient fairground organs used to accompany fairground rides and attractions in the 19th century. Without pretending to go into something as magisterial, we didn't resist the temptation to build an automatic instrument driven by a computer, based on Yoctopuce modules, to see where the difficulties would lay. Result: it's quite easy and it's not even that long to do. Supporting evidence in a video below!

A Tweet controlled Christmas ornament

By Sébastien Rinsoz, in Internet of Things, december 19,2013.

The holiday season is starting presently and it is more than time to take out Christmas decorations. While rummaging in the attic, we happened on an old ornament in the shape of a snowman. We thought that there had to be a way to make this basic ornament into something much more interesting. And what if YOU could control our Christmas ornament with a Tweet? Let's see how to put this idea into practice…