Has anyone experience with a esp soil moisture sensor

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@Mondkind Thanks. This looks promising.

@Freekwilly said in Has anyone experience with a esp soil moisture sensor:

Has anybody of you succesfully tested the Xiaomi Plant Thingy with Pimatic already?

waiting for my personal china-man…
I will write a short tutorial when I got the part to run… but i think with the current development-state of pimatic-ble it will become a ShellSensor device with a little python-script

I join you … wait for delivery from China, too
Do we want to open a new thread for this topic?

I am also looking for a soil moisture sensor for outside.
I read very often that the copper on the cheep sensors will oxidize within a few weeks and than the measures are not longer reliable.
Please keep us informed how long they are working

@Raducanu I think there are some products available in the gardening sector which are unfortunately very expensive (80 - 160 EUR per data point).

A sensor which looked promising to me was the Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor (a former spin-off from ETH Zurich, see CNET Review). However, Koubachi was acquired by the Swedish Husqvarna Group last year and the Koubachi Web-Site had been closed. It is said the Koubachi is now part of the Gardena team. Gardena was is a German company which is also part of Husqvarna Group for about 10 years now.

@xCite86 Looking forward for your progress. I am also waiting for the postman to come with the parcel from china…

@Raducanu

For the Cheap Sensor:

Firstly, it is very important how often is measured
Read this: https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/1806/howto-build-a-cheap-wired-soil-moisture-sensor

Secondly, the material.
Here a “stainless steel bicycle spoke” can be soldered to the sensor material

I can took some pictures, if you are interested

Thirdly, use outdoors.
With some fantasy you should get the sensor waterproof

To calibrate the sensor, I found this formula.
RH = 100 - ((Current Value - WaterValue) / ((AirValue - WaterValue) x 0.0.1))

Test the sensor in various media (wet, dry and moist)
I have also tested in stone, earth and hydroculture

The adjustment can be made via the small potentiometer
Tip: Mark the factory setting with a pen!

@Mondkind
sure, pls. go ahead and post some pictures for us!

@Mondkind Maybe we should open a separate topic for the Xiaomi MiFlora. I have been able to successfully pass the sensor data (temperature, soil humidity, light, soil fertility and battery level) into Pimatic, using a workaround, but it’s good enough at this point. Basically:

1. step, using a rule in pimatic to run Openha’s https://github.com/open-homeautomation/miflora/ “python3 demo.py” script every 5 minutes (pimatic-cron plugin), and send the output to a file (overwriting it’s content with every update, so the file will contain only the latest data). Raspbian’s cron could be used as well, but using pimatic rules, there is no need for an external component, and the config file will contain every setting, except the openha python3 script itself.
2. Use the pimatic-log-reader plugin to create a LogWatcher device, and read the data from the output file of the python script.

It’s hacky, but I’ve been running it for approx. a week now, and it’s reliable enough. I can share the pimatic rule and device config if anyone is interested.

@zsiti said in Has anyone experience with a esp soil moisture sensor:

It’s hacky, but I’ve been running it for approx. a week now, and it’s reliable enough. I can share the pimatic rule and device config if anyone is interested.

pls go ahead if it’s not too demanding …

https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/2588/xiaomi-miflora-plant-sensor