Upcycling an old fan

By mvuilleu, in DIY, Internet of Things and Measures, september 27,2024.

Almost ten years ago, we showed you how to combat humidity in a room using humidity-controlled ventilation. The system described had just then been installed in a cellar, where it worked efficiently until very recently. Unfortunately, the discovery of mold alerted us to a problem, and a quick check revealed that the system had broken down: the fan controlling the air intake had died.

Optimizing automatic watering using sensors

By mvuilleu, in Measures, august 16,2024.

At the beginning of the Summer, we showed you in this blog the installation of a SenseCAP S700 V2 weather station with the aim of collecting data to optimize the watering of a vegetable garden. After a few weeks of measures, it's time to analyze the data collected to see whether or not it provides any useful information...

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.