I am trying to build a scale for a beehive that is accurate to a pound but preferably a tenth of a pound. The data sheet for this load sensor says that its comprehensive error is 0.05 mV/V. What exactly does this mean in terms of pounds? How accurate would these load sensors be if I used four with the combinator and amplifier from SparkFun?
The load cell response characteristic is 1 millivolt per volt of excitation. This means that if you use 10 volts for excitation (aka supply), the load cell will output 10 mV at capacity.
My take on the comprehensive error figure is that it’s the worst case of all of the other error values. 0.05 mV/V of the rated output is 5%. This is pretty poor and I’d expect it to actually perform significantly better and not approach the worse-case value.