The quest for the perfect USB battery, part 1

By martinm, in Reviews, august 02,2024.

10-12 years ago, you could buy a USB battery for 10-20 euros, and use it to power a Yoctopuce experiment without asking yourself too many questions. Unfortunately, today it's very hard to find a USB battery that can power a Yocto-Wireless or YoctoHub-GSM-based experiment. So we decided to invest some time, and money, in trying to find a good one.

Testing the Renesas FS3000 air speed sensor

By mvuilleu, in Reviews and Measures, july 26,2024.

Renesas recently released a new I2C sensor that caught our eye: a tiny miniature sensor for measuring airflow velocity. It's a measure we're interested in, because many industrial processes need well-regulated ventilation to run reproducibly, and progressive clogging of filters can significantly affect ventilation capabilities. Let's take a look at this sensor...

A quick tutorial on I2C

By mvuilleu, in Measures and Internet of Things, july 19,2024.

Many sensors on the market use an I2C interface. The datasheets for these sensors usually simply recall how an I2C bus works by copying and pasting the original Philips/NXP specifications, but for engineers implementing PC- or Internet-based automation solutions today, this isn't necessarily the most relevant explanation. So here's our crash course for new I2C users.

Integrating an M-Bus meter in Home Assistant

By mvuilleu, in Internet of Things and Measures, july 12,2024.

M-Bus (also known as Meter-Bus) is a standard dating back to the '90s, designed for reading water and power meters. A wireless variant using the same data coding was later defined, but for this post we'll focus on the original version, which powers and reads up to 250 meters over 1 km, linked by a single pair of twisted wires.

VirtualHub v2 security modes

By seb july 07,2024.

This week, we're releasing a new version of VirtualHub v2 that introduces the concept of security mode. As the name suggests, security modes let you configure VirtualHub network access parameters to suit your needs.