Gikfun Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor Corrosion Resistant for Arduino Moistu...

I bought these sensors for a plant waterer i have been working on. after reading some of the other reviews i took the time to coat with conformal and i added some additional silicone and heat-shrink tubing for the connector. my project is running on an Adafruit Trinket M0 using CircuitPython. Things were working great at the beginning, then they weren't. Turns out when i added my 3.3v voltage regulator to power the board, i had moved the sensor's VCC from the board to the regulator. i later found out that the regulator needs some capacitors to even out the voltage. when i moved the sensor VCC back to the board output, readings went back to being reasonably stable. i added a median filter and a mean filter to the code to help smooth out any sensor data fluctutions. the sensor is not super accurate, but it definitely works well enough for my project. around the same time i also purchased one of Adafruits fancy I2C soil sensors. after seeing the size difference, i feel that it would be too small for bigger plants. so i'm glad that i also purchased these. i would definitely purchase these again.

Works just fine. If you want your sensor to last more than a few months you need a capacitive sensor like this. The conductive type of sensors (with 2 exposed metal probes that go into the soil) will destroy themselves through electrolysis. There is no way to avoid this, it is just a flawed design concept. This type of sensor doesn't have that problem because it doesn't send current through the soil. If you really want this sensor to last, you should coat the PCB with something waterproof since the sides are a potential failure point. I put mine in a plastic bag and it still works, just a little less sensitive.

Sensor installed fine and reports values as expected, though I have learned that it is very temperature dependent. For outdoor applications where there are day/night temperature swings, this skews results pretty significantly. This can likely be compensated for with a temperature sensor, but it would be nice for this product to include that as a pre-packaged solution.

I was initially excited about the Gikfun Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor, but unfortunately, it didn’t last long. After a short time, the contacts corroded, making it unusable. Disappointing durability for something intended for moisture monitoring

I got these to make an automatic plant feeder as a first raspberry pi project. The sensors detect if they are wet, dry, or somewhere in-between perfectly fine. Took a little setup inside the pi and finding the right libraries to use but it works. They had one issue but I will not take a star off for this because it might be the library I used. There was not a "true zero" so I had to make it true zero inside my code. I don't remember the exact numbers but fully wet was a 55,000 reading and fully dry was 34,000 I believe. So I just used the difference between that of 21,000 as my 1 to 100% measurement. I can explain further if someone needs it, just leave a comment on this review. I also purchased some conformal coating to protect the boards. Even with my sloppy job on one of them(only trying to get the edges) it still works.

I don't think you can really calibrate these without drying soil in a kiln to get 0%. Instead what I did is measured the reading in air and call that 0% and take the reading submerged to the line in water and call that 100%. With this system a range of 40-70% seems to be about right for my plants. I conformal coated the electronics on top, and I buried them only to the line. I've had one running for a couple of months and it's working great. I'm about to buy 6 more to add more channels. Update: a few of them have gone wonky, I think due to water effecting the electronics. What I'm doing now is coating the electronics with a thick layer of liquid tape, hopefully that will prevent the problem. They definitely need to be coated with something. Edit: Over time more than 50% of these have died on me. Even with liquid tape completely covering the electronics. I think perhaps water is infiltrating the layers of the PCB from the edges? Anyway I can't recommend them for long term installations unless you have no other options.

These devices work great for my small automated grow system! The only thing that you need to do before using them is to coat the electronics at the top with a couple layers of conformal coating (or clear nail polish in a pinch). If you don't it is possible to get incorrect readings if the electronics get wet.

I bought these because my other soil moisture sensors corroded within a week. these capacitive soil moisture sensors are very accurate and stay accurate because they do not breakdown. Very easy to hook up and work with and you do not have to worry about your project failing or troubleshooting why your soil is not watered. I would still recommend not supplying power to them 24/7, a few times a day have them power on and check the soil moisture then power them back off unless you have very water specific plants.

Worked as expected. Good product.

Ok

They were pricey compared to purchasing from offshore. I need them in a hurry. They work very good and no special driver is required to work in Arduino, just the analog input.

Good , sensitive.

Protect the sides, I would recommend. But it's a step above the conductive sensors, which do not work well. These should last. I am happy. Arduino usage very simple.