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...

A tiny USB hub

By martinm, in New stuff, october 07,2011.

There is generally no problem to remotely drive a legacy appliance using a USB device from Yoctopuce. It is actually quite simple: disassemble the appliance (without losing the screws), install the module in it (without forgetting to put a USB cable to the outside) and reassemble the appliance (using as many of the original screws as you can figure out). Given their average size of 20x45mm, Yoctopuce modules are generally small enough to fit anywhere.

Now, when you need to put several USB devices in an appliance, it is a different matter. Stuffing the devices themselves is usually OK, but then you need to add a USB hub as well, and all the cables with their big connectors...

Yoctopuce libraries

By martinm, in Programming, september 30,2011.

People often ask how we manage to drive our USB devices using programming languages such as Javascript. Just for once, let's go for some slideware.

We provide three kinds of libraries to drive our USB devices: native libraries, dynamic libraries, and libraries requiring a virtual hub. All are available with source code.

Birth of an USB module (part 2)

By mvuilleu, in Electronics, september 23,2011.

This article follows the previous article on this topic, this time with a video after the break...
For soldering components, we also use a fully automated process. The PCB is put in our autoplacer robot. First, the robot gently injects one or more drops of solder paste on each pad where a component has to be placed, using a small motorized syringe driven by an Archimede screw. Then, it picks all board components one by one from a reel or from a tube, and places them at the right place and in the right position.

Josephine the USB coffee machine

By martinm, in DIY, september 16,2011.

The number one fantasy among DIYers is probably hacking the coffee machine to remote control it. We thought about this for many years. Today we finally decided to do it. Meet Josephine, our coffee machine, an old JURA IMPRESSA F505 model.

The most difficult part was to dismantle it. Obviously, the guys who designed it did not want us to have a look inside. There is almost no screw: all parts are clipped-in.