The Secret to Designing High Resolution Load Cell Electronics
Keeping tabs on the booze - Automated and accurate liqour mangement for BarLinQ
How do restaurant and bar owners keep track of their liquor inventory? This question has plagued the industry for years. Many weighing companies have tried to create a solution and many have failed. The problems that make this application difficult from a weighing perspective are:
- The fast-paced environment with a great degree of human variable,
- How to distinguish one bottle from another,
- Accuracy required to collect meaningful data
By working with the experts at Group Four Transducers, BarLinQ has created the inventory control system that solves these problems.
BarLinQ’s Smart Scales collect data in real time from the high-performance Group Four digital scales. This allows their customer to keep track of what’s in the bottles at any point in time. The BarLinQ software can give you reports that break out pour cost by the bar, shift, or even the bartender allowing the owner to see the true cost of buybacks and heavy pours (and when they occur).
Not only did Group Four provide the weighing components, we worked with BarLinQ’s engineers to design a low-profile platform that could physically fit in the speedwell of the bar. That’s the Group Four way… overall application assistance, unique design engineering, solutions focused. Contact one of our application engineers today!
More about BarLinQ:
BarLinQ is the inventory control system the industry has been waiting for. BarLinQ’s Smart Scales collect data in real time to create the most valuable and actionable reports in the industry. Never again eyeball your stock, BarLinQ keeps track of what’s in the bottles and will even create a P.O. when it’s time to order more. Break out Pour Cost by the bar, shift, or even the bartender. See the true cost of buybacks and heavy pours. More importantly, see exactly when they occurred. Want to keep 1 week’s stock on hand? 3 Weeks? Just tell BarLinQ once and it will let you know when to order. Want to keep track of what’s moving faster and what’s wasted shelf space, just ask BarLinQ. Our scales sit discreetly behind the bar never interrupting workflow. Visit www.BarLinQ.com to learn how to maximize your bar’s profits.
The secret to designing high-resolution load cell electronics lies in the power supply
A common problem with weighing applications is that the vessel that holds the product you are trying to weigh (dead load), substantially outweighs the product itself (live load). An example of this is when a fruit processor is trying to weigh a hopper full of blueberries. The hopper weighs several hundred pounds but the blueberries weigh less than 20 lb. Of course, the more accurately we can weigh the hopper, the more precisely we can fill containers of blueberries.
To process the load cell signal, the electronics in this measuring chain must be very fast and very stable. Why are the Group Four electronics solutions superior to other manufacturers? What makes them more stable in this application? There are many reasons and each component must be optimized for best performance. However, Group-4 has taken a different approach toward optimizing the electronic performance by using AC excitation rather than DC.