Scales that refuse to measure if the battery isn't brand new

Moonrise2473@feddit.it to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 280 points –

I hate this scale, it says low battery and shuts off after just 3 months of sitting in the drawer. It infuriates me that there's still a lot of energy in the battery, I can use that in remote controls with no issues

If there's enough battery to say "low battery", then there's enough battery to show the measurements!

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Mighty informative, thank you

Look up piezolectric materials if you wanna know more

The GP is not describing a piezoelectric scale. And you won't be able to find any piezoelectric scale that is anything similar to "cheap".

Well which principle do the cheap ones operate on?

It's actually a plastic ribbon with a metallic foil in a zigzag pattern on top of it. It's extremely cheap and does a pretty good job. It usually sits on top of a metal bar that can deflect a tiny little bit.

You can read all about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_gauge

The main effect is that the resistance depends on the geometry. So as that changes, the resistance changes as well.