Loadstar Sensors Make Load Sensing Easy By Shalin Shah Jameco Product Manager

Product Update – August 2010 "What's a load cell?" I thought to myself as my Marketing Director asked if I could blog about Loadstar Sensors for my next Product Update. So I did what any sensible person would do...and Googled it. It turns out that a load cell is exactly as the name suggests, it's a transducer cell that determines the amount of load on a system. How It Works So how exactly do one of these load cells work? Here's a diagram illustrating how Loadstar's digital USB load cells work:

Applications

There are many practical applications for load sensors, from monitoring an IV drip bag to automating the filling of water bottles to even monitoring your center of gravity while swinging a golf club.

Here's how the golf training application might work: Use a platform plate of some sort outfitted with four 100lb. iLoad USB Load Cells in each corner. Connect each Load Cell to a computer preinstalled with Loadstar's specialized LoadVUE software via a USB hub.
The center-of-gravity monitoring system will then track your center of gravity pathway in order to ensure an optimum golf swing for maximum power and precision.

(Golf Training Application Diagram)

Parts Used: 4 - 100 lb. iLoad USB Load Cells (2120920 or 2120971) Platform Plate (i.e., Wooden, metal, etc.) USB Hub (2119646) LoadVUE Software (Included with USB Load Cells) Total Setup Time: 15 mins.

(LoadVUE Software)

Thoughts Whether wired or wireless, this is definitely new and upcoming technology. While I've discussed only one or two applications here, there must be hundreds of ways to design some added intelligence into common projects. Loadstar realizes that the software is as important as the hardware and has done a good job of integrating the two to make customizing this technology easy and straightforward.