Christmas Present Weight Scale

#25ProjectsofChristmas

Christmas Present Weight Scale

In A previous video on my Youtube Channel I showed how to assemble the M5Stack Scale unit but never filmed how to program the unit.

Unfortunately This kit is now End Of Line and no longer available. There are still a few kits out in the world and so I will show you a Christmas themed project using it.

While the kit is no longer available, parts that make up the electronics of the kit are still available:

• StickCPlus Kit,
• Weight Cell Amplifier Unit,
• 20Kg canter leaver Load Cell (Available online)

For this project you will need:

• M5Stack Digital Scale Kit
• Christmas presents.

Assembling the Digital Scale Kit.

Step 1 - Inside the kit we have a bottom plate and two top plates.

Take the bottom plate, the six rubber feet and six M3x8mm screws and fix the feet to the plate. The holes in the plate have tapered laser cut holes in them. Fit the screws into the side of the plate with the narrow hole ends.

Step 2 - Take the load cell, the two M5x16mm screws and one of the spacers (if you can't find these, they should be still stuck in the base plate.) Place the spacer between the load cell and fit the screws so that the screw heads stick out of the base plate on the same side as the rubber feet. There is a sticker with an arrow on one end, make sure that when the load cell is screwed down the arrow points to the base plate. The screws will only go into one end of the load cell.

Step 3 - Electronics.

If the load cell comes with the wires unconnected to the Weight Unit you will need to connect them. if you have the kit then the wire colours should match the terminals on the Weight Unit.

Step 4 - Connect the Weight unit to the M5StickC

Take the short four wire (Grove) cable and plug one end into the Weight Unit and the Other into the StickC,

Take the four little black connectors and fit the Weight Unit and StickC to the base plate as shown.

Step 5 - Top Plate

There are two top plates in the kit one with holes and one without. I have take the one without the holes and fitted it to the load cell with the other spacer between them and the two M4x16mm screws to secure them together.

Step 6 - Program the StickC.

Connect the StickC to a wifi network, load UIFlow and connect UIFlow to the StickC using the API Key shown on the StickC's screen.

The following code reading returns the value from the load cell in grams

The Set Screen Rotate turns the screen 90 degrees clockwise. The two Wait and Return to zero block give the Sensor time to initialise and calibrate before setting the display to zero (aka hitting the Tare button)The Loop reads the values from the weight unit and displays Weight gms = with the value from the Weight Unit.

And that's it!

We now have the Digital scale up and working in order to help us gets what could be in the mystery box's from Santa.