Scales That Connect to Laptop
 

About a year ago I read an article that had a guy balancing his TC with 4 little individual boxes with no display that connected back to a laptop which displayed the weight on each corner.

I have been trying to find these for awhile but have come up empty handed. Has anyone ever heard of something like that or could maybe provide a link. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I haven't seen ones you hookup to a laptop, but you can find individual scales for cheap...

2000g (good for 1/10)

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?LH_BIN=1...=p3286.c0.m489


5000g good for 1/8+

http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=500...sacat=0&bkBtn=

Thanks I might have to go with those but I will keep an eye out for those modules as well. All in the effort to save more space in my pit bag.

I've been working an idea that is somewhat similar. Basically using four load cells and/or strain gauges (more or less the same thing) to measure the balance at each corner.

The main concept is that you don't really need to measure an accurate weight at each corner, you just need to know what they are relative to each other. For example when the car is balanced each load cell will produce 7mV. This doesn't tell you anything about the weight, but that doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about using an algorithm to convert the signal to a force (weight) since you just want to know the signals are equal.

I have been in the lab playing around with a few designs, but the load cells available there aren't optimal. I've been looking into getting some better load cells, and still playing around with the best way to display the load cell voltages.

This is out of date, but its what you're apparently looking for - 2nd product shown down the list, RC Car Weight Balancer"

http://www.rccartips.com/racing-rc-cars.htm


Maybe this will help locate one? It looks like LongacreRacing went 1:1 with the scales -

http://www.longacreracing.com/catalog/index.asp