David,

I think you're familiar with the carbon microphone.  Why can't you use
something like that?  You will have a container full of carbon grains, and a
membrane covering the top.  The harder you push, the less the resistance,
and vice versa.

How precise do you want your strain gauge to be?

Vitaliy


> Does anyone know of a soucre of cheap strain gauges?
>
> What I want to do is measure the force applied to the coupler on my
> model train.  The plan is to measure the force and transmit it to a
> readout station - via IR or rf.  So, I need a way of measuring the force
> -- any other ideas?  (cheap is in :-)

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