Anyone happen to have a good idea for a reliable load cell type sensor in board-mounted format (pref multi-pad SMD/SMT) that doesn't cost the idiotic amounts of money Mouser asks for wired ones?

@Asmyldof These are kind of cool: never used one but almost did. digikey.com/product-detail/en/…

If that counts for anything

@laptop2d Those definitely fall in the "this project cannot be economically viable" section by a factor of 10 or more

I did find a lot of those

ouch, thats quite a price, chaper to buy some chinese scales and take them apart ^^

Those don't have board mounted sensors

Is motor control a dead field? Should I rather gain expertise in Machine Learning and Computer Vision rather things like how to drive a BLDC?

totally dead. nobody will ever again want to control a motor

@PlasmaHH I mean, if you were to go for a PhD, between those 3 subjects, what would you choose?

@Zeta.Investigator death?

@PlasmaHH :)

@Zeta.Investigator It's a mature field, meaning there's not a lot of low-laying fruit

Also would recommend against a straight-to-PhD approach

(not sure if you're in that position, but you kinda sound like an undergrad)

why did nobody widely adapt strlcpy, strncpy is a performance nightmare :/

@Asmyldof I vaguely remember seeing an SMT piezo-polymer force sensor somewhere. It looked like a SMT tactile button.

@NickAlexeev I think that may have been the Honeywell that @laptop2d linked, but those will kill just about any project

Price killed my project also, we wanted to use 24 of them. Everybody else needs to start using them to bring the price down

So I'm designing an Arduino-based device that will test various sensors in the field. (Literally a field, a technician will troubleshoot with this device at remote environmental monitoring sites.)

The fork in the road is deciding to go with lipo or disposable AA batteries to power the device...

It entails a 2x4" LCD screen (QC2004A), two Arduino Mega 2560s, 12V to 5V buck converter so it can power a technician's mobile phone. So it has to be 12V for the barrel plug of the Mega 2560.

@AdamUraynar How much current does it consume when active? How much active time per day (or per shift)? How long max unattended standby?

It's to be used maybe three times a week, for about 20 minutes.

...That's my estimate anyway.

quora.com/unanswered/…

Any direction or reference is welcome =)

It looks like there's some confusion as to whether you're making a sensor tester or a cellphone battery charger

and you don't have any info on the sensor

And the AtMEGA will blow up if it is drawing 2A

I'm also skeptical that you need 12V to power a Mega board

@AdamUraynar Based on your numbers, you'll probably need to build it and measure current.

I am building a device with the particle electron connected to the included antenna(datahseet: cdn.taoglas.com/datasheets/PC104.07.0165C.pdf). I am wondering if there are some general guidelines on where to put/not put the antenna in the enclosure of the project(which is made of plastic). Does it matter(will it affect the performance/"integrity" of the cellular connection) if the antenna is too close to the edges of the container? And would power supplies hinder the "performance"

of the antenna, if they are in close proximity with each other?