Thanks a lot for the reply Clemens, what is the other benefit of the Seeduino over Arduino Uno for example apart from being 'plug and play'?
I had been thinking of the following.
Arduino Uno with Power Saving library by Rocket Scream (found this at comoyo.github m2m adventures measuring temperature of water and air, this seems to be in line with my project except I will record weight) Nick Gammon appears to offer other techniques to save power but it is too complex for me, so unless I need greater power reductions I won't go down that path. Hopefully a solar trickle charged battery that powers the Arduino, suggestions?
I will use this shear beam load cell http://www.ebay.com/itm/371036128442?var=640213319397&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649
I know people talk about creep, temperature compensation and distortion due to long term loading on load cells. Can you offer advice on this particular cell? It has specs on the page but I don't know how to interpret, it talks about creep and temperature, are those figures ones I will need to use for calibrating or does it mean within those ranges, temperature for example, the load cell will be accurate?
I had intended to use one of the following MCP3551, ADS1231 (I think you used this Clemens) or INA125P - can you help tell me the difference between these, if any?! So far I am leaning towards 1 of the MCP or INA only because I have seen others use it so should be able to wire it up OK. Any advice here?
Finally, the most expensive part is a GSM shield, I haven't decided on what one yet, but hopefully can adapt the code M2M used for sending the data and I will use something like xively.com to store and present data (unless there is another suggestion here too?). Haven't looked too closely yet but there seems to be good information at cerulean.com and liubo.us on load cells and arduinos.
The way I would like it to work is for the weight to be recorded every hour between 5am and 7pm but to only send the data once at say 8pm, if it is too difficult to do an hourly reading and to send then one reading at 8pm is fine.
I have lots of good references, can I just put libraries/code all together? Or will it be far more complicated. Are there any obvious problems with what I have outlined? What is the best way to start?
Thanks all, sorry for the long winded post!