Slide 1

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

Today I will be presenting to you the final year project of my top-up degree in electrical and electronic
engineering. Before we get started I'd like to give you a bit of background about myself. My name is
Ahmed Elfadel, I did my HND in Qatar around three years ago and since then I worked in an oil rig for a
company called Qatar Petroleum before coming to Teesside to do my one year top-up.
The title of my project is
DESIGN OF A SIGNAL CONDITIONING CIRCUIT FOR A HALF BRIDGE WEIGHING SYSTEM

Slide 2
On the slide you can see the structure of my presentation,
1. First I will go through the objectives of the project,
2. Second what was covered in the literature review used of the writing of the project repot
3. Third the methodology used in the workings of the project.
4. Fourth are the results of the project, followed by the conclusion determining the what was
achieved in the project.
5. And finally I will mentioned my recommendations for further development on the project.

Slide 3
The literature review used in the course of the project covered the following two principles
1. First, the different configurations of the Wheatstone bridge possible for use with strain gauges.
That includes;
 Quarter bridge arrangement - using one strain gauge, in two-wire and three wire
configurations
 Half bridge arrangement
 Full bridge arrangement
2. Second the different specifications of strain gauges were discussed covering qualities such as;
 Gauge factor (GF) which is the ratio of relative change in electrical resistance to the
mechanical applied
 Resistance value of gauge
 Temperature operation range
 Material alloy the conductive element is made from
Slide 4
The methodology were broken down into the form of an entire measurement system covering
1. First, the sensing element detecting the application of weight
2. Second, the signal conditioning where the produced signal by the sensing element is amplified
to a range suitable for processing
3. Third, the signal is then converted from an analog format into digital format to allow inputting
into a digital processor
4. Fourth, the data processed in the processor is then displayed in a visual manner in format
suitable for exportation or logging

Slide 5
 This is a picture of the weight cell used for the project, which is available in the electronics lab in
Stephenson building.
 The weight cell is designed to handle a weight of 0 to 300 grams and is equipped with two strain
gauges, one placed on the top of the beam and the other on the underside.
 The strain gauges measure the physical displacement caused when a weight is placed at the end of
the beam, when the beam is bent by a weight, the top strain gauge measures the tension at the
surface at the beam while the second gauge measures the compression.
 The tension and compression cause the resistance values of the two gauges to change and when
placed in a Wheatstone bridge arrangement the bridge produces a small milli-volts output.

Slide 6
 In figure two we can see the change of the resistance in the two strain gauges as the load is
increased from no load to full load.
 The minimum and maximum values of the bridge output can be calculated by using the resistance of
the two strain gauges at no load and full load.

Slide 7
 After identifying the minimum and maximum bridge mill-voltage output, the gain of the
instrumentation amplifier was calculated and the following circuit, in figure 3, was designed.
 The output of the amplifier was design to fall within a range of 0-5 volts due to the use of an
Arduino processor for signal input.
  The circuit is composed of four parts
o This is the half bridge arrangement with the two strain gauges.
o This section is the instrumentation amplifier composed of two parts, the buffer circuit
and the differential amplifier.
o This section is the zero and span adjustor using positive and negative and voltage
injection to compensate for voltage offset
o This is the low pass filter which removes any high frequency noise on the low frequency
signal produced by the bridge

Slide 8
 After the signal is amplified by the instrumentation amplifier it is converted into digital format
using the analog input of the Arduino built-in 10 bit analog to digital converter which has a
resolution of 1024.
 The Arduino needed to be coded for signal processing and data logging afterwards

Slide 9
 The Arduino was coded to calibrate the signal coming into its voltage analog input read by the
Arduino in 1024 resolution to a display output of 0 to 300 grams.
 The code also utilized the Parallax PLX-DAQ library to create a communication path with
Microsoft Excel to allow for live data recording and logging. Figure 5 is a screenshot of the code
developed.

Slide 10
 The following are the end results for each of the four project aims
 The designed conditioning circuit was designed and simulated successfully producing an output
ranging from 0 to 5 volts for a weight range of 0 to 300 grams based on the change in the gauges
resistance
 The designed circuit was constructed as a prototype however it did not work successfully. The
circuit was re-constructed multiple times and many attempts of troubleshooting were done on it
however it was not successful and due to the time constraints the project had to continue to the
data acquisition system
 Slide 11
 Due to the lack of functionality of the prototype, the analog to digital conversion and acquisition
were tested by mimicking the output of the amplification circuit using a variable supply DC
voltage source. Figure 8 shows the testing process
 The input voltage was increased in increments of 0.25V in supply to the Arduino input, to test
the workings of the coding. The code translated the voltage input to the processor from 1024
resolution into an output of 0-300 grams.
 Figure 9 shows the data recorded live during the process, using the PLX add-on allowing for live
data recording on Microsoft Excel.

Slide 12
 In conclusion
o The first aim of the project which is the design and simulation of the amplification circuit
was successful
o The construction of the circuit prototype was unsuccessful
o The analog to digital conversion and data input was successful
o The data recording, logging using the PLX data acquisition library was successful
Slide 13
The following are my recommendations for further development on the project
 Further circuit trouble shooting to gain the circuit prototype functionality
 Add digital and zero-span adjustment using the Arduino analog output as the source for the
voltage injector in the zero-span adjustor section of the circuit.
 Addition of an LCD Arduino shield to be able to read the weight value in grams directly from the
LCD screen.
Slide 14
This leads me to the end of my presentation. Thank you all for listening.
Any questions?