Ever wanted to build your own LoRaWAN connected weighing scale? Me neither, but apparently those types of products already exist for logistics and inventory management, and LilyGO’s latest ESP32 board – the TTGO T-Weigh – is designed for this exact purpose with a Semtech SX1272 based LoRa module, and four HX711 24-bit ADC chips.
The board can handle up to four scales that transfer weight data over WiFi, Bluetooth or LoRaWAN, and should be useful in applications that require weighting goods or products where there are limited connectivity options including logistics, farming.
TTGO T-Weigh specifications:
The company provides Arduino and Platform.io samples on Github to show how to measure the weight and transmit the data with WiFi or LoRa. The results can also be shown on one of LilyGO bracelets. You’d also need a load cell with the minimal configuration as shown below to measure weight.
If that seems a lot of work to come up with a complete scale, because there’s no enclosure and so on, it might be possible to hack the DIY digital scale kit (now on Ebay for $40) we covered a few years ago, and replace the 8-bit MCU board with TTGO T-Weigh, although getting the display and buttons to work should require an I2C IO expander. LilyGO should probably sell the board as part of a kit, or I don’t see many people buying this board, or maybe they already have commercial customers.
If you are interested in the board, you can purchase it on Aliexpress for about $20.5 with either an 868 MHz or 915 MHz antenna.
Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.