These are the main problems we encountered during our project :
Problem |
Work-Around |
* One of the two sensors broken |
Settling for one direction / Making a new sensor |
* Unknown short-circuit resulting in weird data from the load cell in the ranges of milliVolts instead of Volts. Circuit points used for signal recognition no longer useable. |
New circuit points, using an Op-Amp to amplify the milliVoltages. |
* Unknown short-circuit resulting in blowing up the DG303 Chip, making any measurements impossible |
None, had to wait a week(!) for a new one. |
* Above short-circuit also had some impact on the ICL7135 chip responsible for the display and offset calibration. |
New circuit points used to measure proper signals |
We also went through different demo-boards and PICs before finding properly functioning ones, all the while trying to figure out what was wrong ...
Creating a floating ground was necessary to be able to measure the proper signals.