Strain gauge data acquisition board?

[BWimer]

Ok, so what I am looking for, as the title suggests, is a strain gauge data acquisition board. Currently, we have been using all sorts of National Instruments stuff to obtain our goals. To this point they have worked fine, but now we need to seriously downsize for a new lab device we are creating.

Essentially, I am looking for a small, battery powered board that will act as the wheatstone bridge, and then display the force from the strain gauges onto a digital display. If anybody has used the little "handy boards" I would love to find something like that, but just for strain gauges.

We are using 2 shear strain gauges to make a full wheatstone bridge configuration right now. Basically, we're measuring the force on a beam. So does anyone know of a very very small self contained strain measuring device like this? Does one exist? Or are we going to have to make them/manufacture them ourselves? Oh, I should mention that in our set up we are going to have 6 beams to measure the force on. If such a board exists, are there any with multiple inputs? Thanks for any help or info!

 

[dlgoff]

Welcome to PF BWimer. I thinking maybe something like this?
http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=BCM-1&ttID=BCM-1&Nav="

From http://www.omega.com/toc_asp/subsectionSC.asp?subsection=E04&book=Pressure"

 

[pantaz]

You might be able to use this as part of your solution...
http://labjack.com/catalog/ljtick-inamp

 

[BWimer]

Well, I'm afraid those all might be too "big" in a sense. Here is a little more of what I was thinking of:
http://www.electrostandards.com/ProductDetail/?productid=12

Something like that, that we can battery power, hook shear strain gauges too, calibrate in some way shape or form (needs to be precise to 1 Newton), and have going to a display. The Cellmite 4327 is about the only thing I have seen that comes close to doing this. Anyone know of anything similar? Even if it was custom made, because that could be a route we have to go down...

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

For an unconventional idea: I read that the Wii balance board has a pretty good strain gauge bridge build in, at an unbeatable price...

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Looks small too me. It is driving 4 strain gauges and can be read out via blue tooth.

http://www.wiibalanceboardgames.com/post/Wii-Balance-Board-Internals.aspx
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/linux-wii-balanceboard/