I am using watchtower app to monitor soil moisture over time. I’ll report in when I have more data. So far, my findings go the opposite direction
It seems these sensors are indeed quite accurate and consistent but would like more data before I can tell a proper story
very interested in this thread. I have a GW1000 already, thus I can go either way path 915Mhz Ecowitt or 2.4Ghz Zigbee). May I assume that there are no recommendations so far?
Built in driver? Is this on the beta program, I don't see the 3real soil sensor listed
Thanks ,
Im sure when I used the built in driver, the soil moisture was titled Humidity
and the Temperature was in deg F, may be i didnt leave it long enough.
However the community driver I was able to change the temperature event to send deg C which is what the device puts out in the cluster, the driver calculated the deg F value and used that in the event which was no use to me , all metric in UK. An attribute called soilMoisture was created in the driver (humidity was deleted) and this was used in the event with humidity value from the sensor.
I will revert back to the built in for one of the soil sensors and see.
I did recommend and will recommend once more to go with the default hubitat provided driver for this device - it works well nd has more functionality than the driver I built prior to the release of the official hubitat driver
The code in github has been corrected - but the original links at the top still point to the outdated code.
Please update the links to point here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mrferreira89/Hubitat-Drivers/refs/heads/main/Hubitat%3A%20Third%20Reality%20Soil%20Moisture%20Sensor
No need - hubitat released a built in driver for this and it’s better. I’d use theirs
Not sure if someone has mentioned this in any threads but I was having the worst success with these sensors. readings all over the place, not reproducible across multiple sensors in same exact location of the dirt. It wasn't until I pulled out some spark fun soil moisture sensors and was going to just make my own and monitor it with inputs that I noticed the small differentiation's that make such a difference. These are single probe, the spark fun were dual probe, easy to replicate with a little bit of offset. But the dual probes are measuring continuity across probes where the single probe is measuring across the depth sections of the probe. So when calibrating these devices calibrate them according to depth of moisture, not just if its wet or not like the other kind. Now I feel I can go about calibrating these and get better results. I will update with my findings later
I found by putting the sensor in a glass of water you get results that correspond to depth of water. I dropped it in a small glass of water that covered about 1/3rd of the sensor expecting it to tell me 100 percent, it did not, barely above 40. Submersed the sensor fully in the water, up to the top line of the probe and it finally read 100. So my thoughts are going towards depth of moisture, which it should clearly state somewhere in a manual but it does not
Hey thanks for sharing your findings
I’ve noticed “most” of the sensors become more accurate after a few water / dry cycles but overall agreed - the readings are not reliable enough
How were you able to get the spark fun sensors on zigbee?
I also have a crestron system and that has analog inputs that I can use, but I have not gone that route just yet as the sparkfun sensors operate on 5V and the Crestron wants 0-10V input settings. I don't really feel that I want to amp up the output of the sparkfun or downgrade ADC resolution so I am going to explore other options. Knowing how the third reality sensors work now, its just a matter of experimenting and placement of the sensors, knowing that if I am reading higher levels means more water in the soil to the top, and less mositure readings mean top is dried out. Using the general rule of if you can't feel wet soil a finger deep its time to water I can get these calibrated correctly. I will post results when I get done experimenting
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