Has anyone integrated the Tuya GXM-01 soil sensor with Hubitat? I'm looking for a viable soil sensor (moisture and temperature that will work outdoors. I've tried three of the ThirdReality sensors and find they're just junk: Very short radio range, not good battery life. So far two of the three have simply dropped off the mesh and will only reconnect if disassembled and reset by removing battery, then they may only run for a few minutes. Not satisfactory. Even have one about 15 feet away from the hub, and it still drops out.
The Tuya GXM-01 looks interesting, but I can't find if anyone has used it. All are Zigbee, BTW.
This one works well so far
I just found this on AliExpress: AU$36.39 | ZIGBEE Plant Monitor Outdoor Soil Temperature Meter Moisture Humidity Tester Sensor Garden Automation Irrigation TUYA Detector
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mqP4Gbh
Using kksov “Tuya temperature humidity illuminance lcd display with a clock” driver
That link appears to be the Tuya GMX-01, albeit very expensive. Amazon sells them 2 for US$45. The question is: is there a driver for Hubitat? Specifically, the C7 for me...
Are you saying you use the Hubitat driver for the Tuya indoor device?
And it just works, well? Any issues with pairing?
Unless temperature is a deal breaker, you could look at EcoWitt Soil Moisture Sensors...
I second that. They have amazing range for using outside. You can buy an Ecowitt Weather station and use the local integration for it with Hubitat, and then add on other devices, like the soil moisture sensors, or just by the gateway and some sensors.
I tried using Spruce Zigbee moisture sensors, which work well and do also have temp, but I just couldn't keep them connected in the outside gardens. The Ecowitt senors are also cheap, usually less than $20, depending. They take 1 AA battery and will run for a year on one battery.
If you don't want to buy a full weather station, you can buy just the tiny gateway device and some soil moisture sensors. I see Amazon sells the gateway with a moisture sensor.
Thanks to all. The Ecowitt solution looks to me like a sort-of Rube Goldberg contraption! I'm not exactly fond of the capacitive sensors, thus the attraction to the Tuya. I'm not keen on having to string multiple layers, especially RF, to get a simple solution. I just wanted some simple means to monitor my garden beds, but it's looking like a too-expensive boondoggle!
I'm convinced we've yet to see very accurate & affordable soil moisture sensing out of the typical Home Automation devices out there....but....if you are willing to look at the problem in a "three category" manner based on YOUR soil and sensor positioning (seems dry / in the optimal range /seems wet) then you can probably find something that serves that purpose.
Even with the device below I'm seeing some pretty wide daily swings depending on the actual soil moisture content, the air moisture content, and the temperature. Otherwise I've been very happy with the compatibility with drivers, Zigbee connectivity, battery life, and waterproofing. I just don't set expectations, or actions, on any reading increment finer than a 20% delta (nor immediately after a rain or watering).
I understand where you are coming from and I'm a bit of a purist myself, but the advantage of RF is the transmission distance. I have one of these Ecowitt's for my soil sensors and there is nowhere on my city lot I can place these and not have an immediate connection to the Ecowitt hub. I believe I would have to make accommodations to my Zigbee network inside the house to come anywhere close to this, even if it were achievable at all.
it's not the range, nor entirely the RF, itself, that I balk at, although adding more RF is not ideal. I already have Z-Wave (in abundance), Zigbee, and 2.4 and 5.2 WiFi networks all over the yard, plus an EAP outside and a slaved client network in the backyard workshop. I already had to move the default Zigbee band so as to avoid the 2.4GHz WiFi, which I have also placed in a fixed space. The Z-Wave works fine, and the very cheap Zigbee outlets I have outside are great, too. They immediately adjusted when I switched the Zigbee RF band. The ThirdReality devices I have did not adapt well, and all had to be reset to reconnect, then failed after a few days. I may end up tossing those in the trash!
RF, in and of itself, does not have any "transmission distance". It's affected firstly by frequency, then by TX power, then by other nearby devices that may or may not be on the same frequency. Even weather, day/night, and other environmental factors can affect range. Ecowitt does not specify what their RF frequencies are, except that the primary is somewhere in the 950MHz range. I just assume their WiFi is at 2.4GHz. Since they don't even seem to have a sales info site, but one that requires an account to access, I'm rather put off by that. They don't seem to be an especially great company.
I already also have two Acurite weather stations in operation, and don't want to pollute that space. I just wish those could connect to Hubitat and not have to use "The Cloud"!
I'm also disappointed in the solutions out there. As far as I can see, there are two designs, and every manufacturer has expensive knock-off branding of each. I already have 3 of the ThirdReality devices you linked, which are the ones I find to be complete junk. Not so much the capacitive sensors, but the RF performance is horrible, much worse than the $10 Zigbee outlets I have: there's no way (as I mentioned above) to reset them or make adjustments, and the radios, which appear to have no actual RF antenna (not even a circuit board patch), just don't work well. They're difficult to connect and impossible to keep connected, even at 15 feet distance.
The accuracy doesn't really bother me, as it's "Rh", after all, not absolute moisture. Rh varies with temperature, and is calculated accordingly. The 3R temperature is measured on-board, which is a few inches above the actual soil, so as the sun heats the air and the case of the device, the Rh drops so long as the absolute moisture in the soil remains the same. Of course, that rises at night or when I water the beds, since after watering there is more absolute moisture as well as cooling of the device. But of the three ThirdReality devices, only one is still working after about 3 weeks operation. That last may fail at any time. Their problem appears to be that they've violated Zigbee protocol and don't have any versatile meshing algorithms, a firmware issue. They just start up, connect to whatever they find, then if there's any disturbance, just drop off forever unless manually restarted, which requires pulling out the device, removing the cover, removing the battery, replacing the battery after a moment, noting if they rejoined the network (it blinks red then blue then stops blinking), replacing the cover, setting the device back in the soil, and hoping it stays connected for more than 10 minutes. They seem to transmit at about 10-minute intervals regardless of data changes, so it's easy to see when they fail because the reports stop. One I have that was closest of all 3 to the hub (about 25ft) worked for around 2 weeks, then dropped off. I decided to place it in a tub planter about 15 feet from the hub and re-start it; it worked for about 2 days then failed about 36 hours ago. I haven't pulled it out, yet, In the total ~3 weeks, the AA batteries are down to around 80% capacity, which forebodes a lifetime of perhaps 4 months.
I think I've decided it's not worthwhile to monitor the soil other than with my eyes and hands!
Now, if other soil conditions such as pH and minerals could be monitored, that would be different!
BTW, I used to program, long ago, with IBM Punch cards, myself
I can confirm that the Ecowitt gateway works very well. I also use an Ambient weather station and there is no interference between them.
Talk about the patience we had to have eh !
I hear ya on the moisture sensors. I guess as far as the radio connectivity I probably have mine pretty within 15' of a repeater so....you could be right that it's not "great"...I haven't pushed it.