Until we changed things up, load cells typically made from strain gauges arranged in a balanced wheatstone bridge configuration were and still are widely used to measure forces/loads.  When a voltage is applied to them and a strain is induced due to an applied load, they typically output a millivolt signal proportional to the strain felt by them.  This signal is represented as a mV/V number i.e. if a 10 V DC power supplyis applied, a 20 mV total change in signal can be seen in response to applied loads. A user would need a signal conditioner to condition this signal, a data acquisition system to digitize the signal and application software to view and process the signal! Users might buy a data aquisition system and some might use a program like LabVIEW to gather data on a PC. A complex, cumbersome and expensive proposition! Loadstar Sensors offers you a much more elegant and simpler solution!

Our iLoad Series Digital load cells are based on a capacitive sensing technology.  It has integrated electronics that converts a load into a frequency and then into a calibrated force/load/weight reading on a PC or a microcontroller without need for any additional signal conditioners, data acquisition systems or special software. Connect a iLoad Digital load cell to your PC's USB port and start measuring!

Capacitive load cells offer moderate accuracies and are recommended to be used in controlled steady state room temperature environments. For higher accuracy or for trade (NTEP) applications, our DI-100U or DI-1000U load cell interfaces offer a similar digital output via USB (or UART) for resistive load cells to connect to a PC or microcontroller via a USB port.

Resistive load cells made using strain gages (piezo-resistive) can be connected to a PC through our DI-1000U USB load cell interface. The USB port itself provides the power needed to operate the system without need for any external power source. These interfaces offer as much as +/- 0.02% of full scale resolutions and accuracy and can support NTEP or OIML calibre load cells.

Our DI-1000ZP wireless load cell interface enables a resistive load cell to connect to a PC via std. IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol. The unit can be powered from a wall adapter or run on the internal rechargeable battery for truly cordless operation. We offer XBee, WiFi, or BLE wireless protocol options.

If you wish to input force values from an iLoad mini load cell or any of the iLoad Series capacitive load cells into an Arduino micro controller, you can simply remove the S2U serial TTL to USB adapter and access the Tx, Rx pins via an HX-100 hybrid adapter as shown below. You can then send ASCII commands and receive force data back grom the sensor into the micro-controller.

The optional LoadVUE Pro, SensorVUE, ControlVUE  load cell software can provide an elegant interface to make it even more convenient to measure loads, and to log the data to a comma separated text file that can be easily opened using Microsoft Excel, Matlab or other statistical analysis packages.