I'm not planning to break much ground in the hardware design. I'll exploit what others have done before me, and I'll also make it easy on myself by using some pre-built components.

For the Wheatstone bridge, I plan to use this SparkFun Load Sensor Combinator.

That has a footprint for an RJ45 socket, which I'll use for connecting this board to the rest of the circuitry. A couple of years ago, for an unrelated project, I bought a couple dozen PCB mount RJ45 sockets that I never got around to using. When I grabbed them to check the dimensions, I discovered that they were top insertion orientation, which is a geometry that's not going to work in this scenario. So, I've now ordered some more PCB mount RJ45 sockets, but with side-insertion orientation. With that RJ45 socket, space will be tight if I attach the board under the scale, so I will probably have to provide some load sensor foot extensions of a quarter inch or whatever for ground clearance.

The cable from that board will go to an amplifier board. For that amplifier, I'll use the SparkFun Load Cell Amplifier - HX711.

That board does not have a footprint for the RJ45 socket, but it does expect the same signals as output by the combinator board.

I want to show a local display of the gross and net weight measurements, and maybe a couple other things. I briefly considered getting one of those so-called Cheap Yellow Displays (CYD) that have an integrated ESP32. However, I've got tons of ESP8266 and ESP32 boards around here, and I've also got a few small color touchscreens. That won't make the tidiest design, but it saves me time and bother. I'm not sure yet if I'll need a power supply for some specialized voltage.

I will almost certainly design a custom PCB that acts as a carrier for the amplifier, the RJ45 socket, the ESP32, the display, and a USB socket for power. I'll wrap all that into a 3D-printed enclosure to make a nice wall-mounted unit at a comfortable reading position.