Smart scale?

I’m just about to embark on a new project to “smartify” my vet clinic weigh scale. I have purchased one of these (the wireless version). Looks like its based around an ESP-01. Documentation is somewhat lacking so it may be…. Interesting…getting it working, we will see.

My basic plan is

  1. power up as is, hooked up to a random load cell see what happens (hell maybe it will send data by mqtt in stock config… wouldn’t that be nice…) Maybe it runs a pretty webserver as is? (My assumption its going to be useless out of the box, but I can dream can’t I?
  2. Backup stock firmware.
  3. Probe rx and tx pins on the board with an oscilloscope to get an idea of what work the esp board is doing (is it just passively receiving and retransmitting? Or is it initiating conversions etc). Hopefully just passively receiving data and the ESP-01 just used to bridge it to wifi.
  4. write and load custom firmware to receive and retransmit data via mqtt.

I will post here as I have updates….

Amazon has some reorder scales (Amazon brand prime stuff) that have a load sensor that can be replaced. I picked one up but haven’t had a chance to give it a whirl yet. The packaging is nice and looks like you can just throw an esp in them.

Xiaomi Miscale works with esp32, whether or not it is suitable for a vet, dunno.


This is the scale I’m planning on working on. My plan is to maintain the original platform and load cells, but remove the controller unit at the top. (That way owners can’t mess with it)

Got the board today. Surprise number 1… its two boards not one. I’m wondering if one is meant as a sending board and one is meant to receive…. Weird because its wifi based, but….
*edit: pretty confidently confirmed one board is meant to transmit, the other receive…