soil moisture sensor in calculation #385
Replies: 3 comments 3 replies
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From the readme: "Note that the humidity sensor mentioned is the air humidity / atmospheric humidity, not soil humidity." |
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yes ... I know ... but as I mentioned I have like a lot of people that I know something like that: |
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I have the same, but... what is measures is just not the same. Try it: water the soil and you'll see your moisture sensor spike and then drop. That is not how you measure how much water to add to the soil to make plants thrive. You simply don't look at soil moisture for that at all. |
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There are soil moisture sensors that are genuinely useful for this purpose, but they're expensive and are often quite large. They rely on something like what an ethernet cable length tester uses, called TDT (Time Domain Transmissometry. Cable testers use TDR). They shoot EM waves into the soil and measure the transmission time and phase and other things I don't understand in order to figure out the true soil humidity. Capacitive sensors like the one you mentioned are greatly affected by soil chemistry and don't really effectively measure soil humidity in an agricultural context. They're useful for telling you when a house plant might need water if you keep the soil chemistry relatively constant, but they're just not helpful here. The cheapest sensor you can get that's not affected too much by soil chemistry is probably the SMT100. It works in a fashion similar to a TDT sensor, but it's much smaller and is somewhat cheaper. Cheaper is relative, since the best price I found online was €129. One nice thing is that it's officially supported in ESPHome. I'm not asking for this to be integrated, but I do think it's interesting to consider how a proper soil humidity sensor might be used. Like, I could see it being useful for catching irrigation issues (e.g. a plant has grown up around a sprinkler and is preventing it from effectively distributing water). You could have an automation or a separate integration that reads/calculates the estimated soil humidity from HAsmartirrigation and then compares it to sensors in various zones so you could be quickly alerted. A good sensor might also be a nice calibration input. |
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Servus, It is currently raining a lot in GER. It is very warm and my sensor readings are around 90% soil moisture. After HAsmartirrigation calculation I had to irrigate full time, but it makes no sense Perhaps you could also integrate something like this as an additional function. |
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I can't and I won't. It is simply not the scope of these kind of calculations that this integrations. It's about moisture loss and making up for it. Moisture sensors simply don't measure that and are too finicky for anything useful for this scenario. Put such a sensor on your grass beneath your sprinkler head. The moisture reading spikes immediately. So if we used that to decide to irrigate or not we would stop immediately after start. Useless.
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Subject: Re: [jeroenterheerdt/HAsmartirrigation] soil moisture sensor in calculation (Discussion #385)
Servus,
I also like the idea of measuring the soil moisture. I also use 3 soil moisture sensors (zigbee2mqtt). I have set approximate irrigation times depending on whether the soil moisture is less than 65%, 55% or less than 45%.
It is currently raining a lot in GER. It is very warm and my sensor readings are around 90% soil moisture. After HAsmartirrigation calculation I had to irrigate full time, but it makes no sense
Perhaps you could also integrate something like this as an additional function.
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Hello. Thanks for this project! I have a separate soil moisture sensor for each zone.
Is it possible to include this information in the calculation? I think that would be a much more accurate sensor than the "open Weather" vlaue humidity. Especially if you have a plant house that has a completely different climate than outside. Thank you if you can make this possible!
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