How to detect leaks in an irrigation circuit

By mvuilleu, in DIY and Measures, july 21,2017.

Irrigation controllers are very convenient to avoid the garden watering chore, but they sometimes create disasters. As times goes by, and with changes in temperature, pipes tend to unbend and sometimes to separate at the joints, creating local inundations which can be devastating the vegetable patch, for example. Let's see how to detect leaks as quickly as possible...

Yocto-Visualization, a free visualization app

By martinm, in Measures and New stuff, may 05,2017.

We have a present for you today. It's something that people have been regularly asking for, despite our best efforts to be as clear as possible that Yoctopuce doesn't provide ready-to-use solutions. In the end, we decided to make a small exception:-) and to give you an application to easily visualize the values measured by Yoctopuce sensors. If you work under Windows, you will be able to display graphs, indicators, and other gadgets in a few clicks. Follow the guide...

A connected smoke detector

By mvuilleu, in Measures and DIY, april 28,2017.

The usual method to detect smoke consists in measuring the reflection of a light beam on the smoke particles suspended in the air. Although we don't explicitly have a smoke detector in our product catalogue, we recently started offering a product which can be used for this: the Yocto-RangeFinder. Indeed, this sensor uses exactly the same principle for its main feature (distance measurement) and can therefore easily be used as USB smoke detector, or even as a networked smoke detector.

New ! The Yocto-RangeFinder

By mvuilleu, in New stuff and Measures, march 17,2017.

We are adding today a new product to our family of position sensors: the Yocto-RangeFinder. It is a kind of intermediate between the low-cost Yocto-Proximity and a precise but expensive laser rangefinder. So let's see how much you can expect from this new piece of hardware...

Yocto-RS232, SCPI and lab Instruments

By martinm, in Measures and Programming, february 10,2017.

Nowadays, most laboratory measuring tools have an RS232 port and/or a USB port, enabling you to drive them remotely. Usually, the manufacturers of this kind of instruments offer a proprietary software to drive them from a computer. This piece of software is usually more or less easy to use and not necessarily free. Obviously, it is tempting to get rid of the original software and to drive the devices on one's own. The question that we pondered this week was to know whether there was a universal way to drive this kind of equipment from an arbitrary software.