HX111 Load Cell for Weight Sensor

Hi! On page 3 of [the HX111 info sheet, it implies that HX711 can be used with [this weight sensor. However, the weight sensor needs an excitation voltage of 10-15V. How can I use the HX711 for this weight sensor?](114990100 Seeed Technology Co., Ltd | Sensors, Transducers | DigiKey)](https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Sparkfun%20PDFs/Load_Cell_Amp_HX711_HookupGuide.pdf)

I haven’t used an HX111 but I have used a lot of load cells. I think it will work just fine. It’s just a set of resistors configured in a certain way glued to a piece of metal of a certain geometry.

The load cell you show works just like a fancy voltage divider. It is all passive with no active elements. So the “excitation” voltage is nothing more that the voltage you are applying to the fancy voltage divider. The higher you could possibly get the voltage (within reason) then the better the resolution could possibly be (more tolerance to noise, etc); but that depends entirely on the measuring system (i.e. the ADC). In the case of the HX711 it provides both the excitation voltage and the measuring system, it is highly integrated and therefore quite specialized for its application. It is designed to work from +3V to +5V so that is what you want to be using.

In short, the load cell doesn’t really care about the excitation voltage and the only type of voltage rating it should have is based on protection of its wiring (something like Max Excitation Voltage) - but that thing is made in China and they probably don’t know that, so they figure specifying the excitation voltage they probably used to define the performance was probably the “rated voltage”.