Reference Design For A SMART BODY FAT SCALE

Reference design for a smart body fat scale that can display body weight, body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage and body impedance.

Are you a fitness freak or a health-conscious person trying to stay fit, and the body mass index (BMI) doesn’t give the complete picture about your body fat percentage or composition. So, if you want to know your body composition or want to know if the ratio of body mass / muscle is enough, then this reference design will help you build your own smart body fat scale that will help you to analyze your body composition.

The Smart Body Fat Scale from Renesas’ gives you complete information about your body composition. The reference design includes four weighing sensors with four metal electrodes for body impedance measurement. The reference design also has a Renesas RL78/L1A MCU that enables Bluetooth connectivity to the device.

The user only needs to enter information such as height, gender, and age, and the smart scale measures weight and uses four metal electrodes to measure impedance. MCU uses all of the above data to measure body fat percentage and other health parameters. The resulting value calculated from weight and bio-impedance can be displayed on an LCD monitor and checked through a smartphone application simultaneously. This solution features the RL78/L1A MCU integrated with rich analog peripherals and an LCD and the RL78/G1D MCU’s BLE communication function. It is suitable for bio-sensing applications in healthcare.

The reference design has been tested by Renesas and is suitable for personal use only. The company claims that the reference design is suitable for non-medical devices. Renesas provides all the necessary resources such as bills of materials, schematics, Gerber files, firmware, etc. to simplify its construction. You can read more about the design reference and download the resources from here.