race car scale beginner project

[Vandiemen23]

I'm an old-school hardware/systems engineer with little practical experience writing software. I've run plenty of software intensive projects, but when you get past partitioning and specific hardware/software performance trade-offs I'm lost, especially when it comes to programmer jargon.

I have a set of race car scales, ancient, wired, and unsupported by the manufacturer. They work fine, but I want to create a hedge against the failure of the head unit, and eliminating the cables would be a big plus too.

My thought is to build at first a simple scale based on the Pico, an HX711, and a display. Once this is working, eliminate the display and go blue tooth to a Pi zero or a 4 with a larger display, and then expand to 4 scale inputs. I'd even consider a laptop or phone instead of the 5th Pi but that seems to be a big software leap for me right now. Looks like a Pimoroni Badger might be an interesting way to start.

Functionally, its extremely simple. I need to turn on the head unit and have it boot directly to the scale app, manually turn on the the individual scales and have them boot directly to the app, have the scales run a calibration and then have the scales connect to the head unit, issue a calibration command when needed from the head unit (via a touch screen or a hardware button push), indicate that calibration is complete, and then display the weight on each scale, likely at a 5-10 hz rate. All components would need to run from battery power for about 8 hours before re-charging.

My first concerns regard the software development environment. I've found numerous guides to setting up the OS on the Pis using desktops/laptops as far as loading and setting up the card, but little on developing applications. I found this helpful start guide: https://realpython.com/python-raspberry-pi/ as well as this one: https://www.robertthasjohn.com/post/how ... t-on-macos I have the Raspberry Pi for Dummies book as well, and I’ve seen a book by Simon Monk “Programming the Raspberry Pi Getting Started With Python” suggested. I’ve found a number of tutorials/blogs where they write the first segment and then don’t go any further….

Also seems like a lot of these tell you WHAT to do but not WHY you’re doing it.

Is it best to develop directly on the Pi? Frankly, due to “lab” space concerns, I’d rather write the software using my Mac and ferry it out to the lab on the SD card. Use something like Xojo?

Any suggestions regarding my approach or good tutorials would be greatly appreciated.

[ame]

My thought is to build at first a simple scale based on the Pico, an HX711, and a display.

Go ahead. Although if what you've got isn't broke, don't break it.

[Vandiemen23]

I think a 1000 lb load cell will be pretty impervious to my actions.

[ame]

I think a 1000 lb load cell will be pretty impervious to my actions.

I meant the system as a whole. You wrote that everything is working fine.

By all means go ahead, but since you have no experience then be prepared for nothing to work for a while. You also described a new system that is far more complicated than the existing system. It might sound exciting, but all you are doing is adding more potential points of failure.

If you have a spare load cell then I recommend that you try and replicate what you have without affecting the original unit.

[Vandiemen23]

not more complicated at all, except for the wireless aspect. Functionally, its identical, and wireless scales are now common, as are displaying the results on your phone.

I've seen several scale projects on the web, just not much in doing four of them simultaneously.

if you want to help I'd appreciate some actual suggestions.

[ame]

not more complicated at all, except for the wireless aspect. Functionally, its identical, and wireless scales are now common, as are displaying the results on your phone.

I've seen several scale projects on the web, just not much in doing four of them simultaneously.

if you want to help I'd appreciate some actual suggestions.

Ok. How about building a simple scale based on the Pico, an HX711, and a display?