High Power measurements by USB

By mvuilleu, in Measures, november 29,2013.

People often ask us whether we have a module to measure electric consumption on a high power system. Indeed, the Yocto-Watt is well suited to measure the power consumed by an electrical appliance, but its design limits the measurable power to 16A. This is not enough for example to monitor the global electric consumption of a house, of an industrial electrical installation of some size, nor of a three-phase electric system. Let's have a look at existing solutions for this type of applications.

Yocto-4-20mA-Rx: the answer to exotic needs

By martinm, in Measures, november 08,2013.

Customers regularly ask us whether we don't want, by any chance, to build a module to measure [insert a physical quantity here]. Sometimes, we jump into it, but we sometimes also decline because the resulting module would be too specific. Therefore, we would likely be unable to sell enough modules to amortize the development costs. We thought about the issue, and we think that we have a reasonable solution.

An autonomous solar weather station

By martinm, in Internet of Things and Measures, october 24,2013.

Do you recall the solar box? Actually, it has never worked well enough to be useful. Here at Yoctopuce, it has been renamed the NULL box. Ruthless, but not so far from reality. But this week, we have a new version of that experiment. This time, it is much easier to make it work because we now have hardware designed with that kind of application in mind.

How to measure a NTC thermistor via USB

By mvuilleu, in Measures, september 15,2013.

Yoctopuce provide three different methods to measure temperature, but there are even more techniques. Thermistors are another option: they are a family of electrical conductors whose resistance varies in a deterministic way based on their temperature, and that can therefore be used to measure temperature. So can we get anything out of them, for instance using a Yocto-Knob?

What happens inside the fridge?

By martinm, in Measures, june 14,2013.

What exactly happens when we open and then close the fridge door? Obviously, the light switches on and off, but how do temperature and power consumption vary? To be frank, this question is not quite innocent. I started a while back to have doubts about how well, or bad, my fridge was working. I have therefore decided to get to the bottom of it. And I made some rather interesting discoveries.