Setting Up a Strain Guage Using a Arduino

This indestructable is being made as one part of three to measure different parts of a beehive as a monitoring station for a college project. This part is to measure the weight of the overall beehive, so the weight of the bees and of the honey/wax can be known. This can then be used to determine the health of the hive

Step 1: Tools & Components Needed

• X5 10kΩ resistors
• X2 1kΩ resistors
• LM 324 Amplifier
• Arduino uno
• Variable resistor
• A Load cell(I have mine on a ruler)
• Bread board

Step 2: As a Block Diagram This Is How the Circuit Will Be Set Up

Step 3: Creating the Amplifier

Shown is the internal circuit diagram for the LM 324 amplifing chip and also the circuit diagram for a instrumentation amplifier.

Step 4: Connecting the Amp

This is all connected up as show in this diagram and below is what it looks like in the bread board. The strain guage is connected to the two inputs of the circuit and that is connected to the arduino

Step 5: Trouble Shooting and Problems Faced

There was quite a few problems with this project. One of the problems was getting to instrumentabtion amp to work. This was fixed by taking apart and remaking the amp multiple times as wires were accidentally put in the wrong place. Another problem faced was that the strain guage gave out a tiny difference in resistance between being fully loaded and having no load on it. This would have resulted in any errors being magnified massively as we used such a large gain on the amp.

Because of the time these faults used up and the limited amount of time that we had in the lab to get the sensor working this project was abondoned for a sensor that was deemed as easier to get working. If there is time after we get that sensor working we may come back to this one and finish it off