Sheet 03.02 · Apr 2024 · 10 min read · Embedded Hardware

Building a High-Speed Check-Weigher with IR and Motion Sensors

Capturing a stable weight from a product moving at speed is mostly a timing problem. Here's how IR and motion sensors solve it.

Weighing something that is standing still is trivial. Weighing something that is sliding past you on a conveyor at speed is a timing problem dressed up as a hardware problem.

The trick is to know exactly when the product is fully on the load cell and momentarily settled. IR sensors mark the entry and exit; a motion sensor confirms the platform has stopped wobbling. Only in that narrow window do we trust the reading from the T16 load cell.

Pair that with an XT1000 transmitter for clean signal conditioning and a Raspberry Pi 4 for the logic, and you get sub-second classification — under, accept, or over — fast enough to drive a reject mechanism in real time.

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