Journal of Scientific Research and Reports

Load cells being essential components of weighing systems, their performance is significantly influenced by environmental variations, particularly temperature fluctuations. Low-cost load cells are widely adopted in IoT-based applications where affordability and accessibility are prioritized. However, their sensitivity to temperature limits their reliability for small-weight precision measurement. To address this, the study investigates the effect of ambient temperature on a 10 kg load cell operating in the range of 200 g to 1000 g, subjected to heating and cooling cycles between 15 deg. C and 35 deg. C. Experimental observations revealed that the raw load cell output exhibited a maximum drift across 2.5% across the 20 deg. C variation, indicating significant temperature dependance. Additionally, hysteresis between heating and cooling cycles contributed an average error of 1.2%, highlighting the challenge of repeatability under changing thermal conditions. Designing of temperature compensation strategy was done and implemented with IoT-enabled weighing system. The compensation reduced the error to below 0.5%. The result establishes the importance of combining the compensation technique with load cell to achieve performance comparable to higher-grade sensors at a fraction of the cost. The study demonstrates a practical and affordable solution to extend the applicability of low-cost sensors for precision-oriented applications in agriculture, small-scale packaging, and industrial quality control.