Hello,
I am a student trying to help my Formula team replace our broken SWI intercomp portable weigh scale system via general learned electrical engineering. The main board of the system went to hell but I still have healthy access to the weigh plates and the female port associated with the 4 plates. There are 16 ports with 4 designated to each scale. The cable that attaches to each scale is a 6 pin amphenol connection if that's relevant. The system from prior testing has a seemingly 1 (black): ground, 2 (white): signal, 3 (green): signal, and then 4 (red): 5V state in the configuration with the main control panel powered on. When connecting the female port of the pin array for the weigh cables to the system, the values for 1-4 becomes about 190mV, 820mV, 960mV, and 1.6V respectively. Attempting to measure some difference in values via applied weight is ineffective due to the oscilloscope not being so fine for the reading and the general varying of values (especially when trying to hone in on micro value changes). Going forward should I attempt to utilize an op-amp to determine the changes more effectively? I more than believe the two middle signals of the system are the signals for the scale and hope to accurately determine what kind of values I am to find and then generate so that I might then be able to later utilize a microcontroller going forward. I assume a microcontroller would be best to analyze the signals and reciprocate the values as needed.
Thank you for your time and please let me know of anything else that would help the cause.

 

It sounds like your system uses strain gages in a full bridge configuration. Look up whetstone bridge to see what's needed to read strain gages.

 

I have a wheelchair weighbridge with 4 strain-gauges, 1 in each corner. The original controller was lost so I replaced it with an HX711 strain gauge interface and a simple Arduino MCU.

Here is an article that explains how its done for 1 gauge/load-cell. You can either use 4 x HX711 interfaces (they are dirt cheap) or wire the 4 gauges together and use 1 HX711 to read the cumulative strain as shown in this video

 

I have a wheelchair weighbridge with 4 strain-gauges, 1 in each corner. The original controller was lost so I replaced it with an HX711 strain gauge interface and a simple Arduino MCU.

Here is an article that explains how its done for 1 gauge/load-cell. You can either use 4 x HX711 interfaces (they are dirt cheap) or wire the 4 gauges together and use 1 HX711 to read the cumulative strain as shown in this video

Thanks boss, this looks like exactly what I need. I'll be attaining 4 HX711's and looking forward to the MCU configuration.

Again thanks a ton!