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Catnip electronics

3,956 orders since Dec 12, 2012

Vilnius, LT, Lithuania

Ships from Lithuania.

Custom Work Available

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Overall Rating:

Review Breakdown

5
39 4
57 3
17 2
5 1
3

Average Ratings

Product: (4.50)

Documentation: (4.04)

Shipping: (4.38)

Communication: (4.31)

All Reviews

Jonathan | Nov. 19, 2018

Great product and service

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

I ordered a few of these and liked them so much I ordered more. The seller stands by the devices and replaced one unit that I sent back to him because it was defective - he told me that he tests all the units and defective ones are rare. Communicating with the seller was quick and there were no language barriers. I've had no issues with the remaining devices, and they operate as expected. The only complaint I would make (if I had to make one) is that it takes a fair amount of time to receive the orders, but to be fair, I am in British Columbia, Canada, and these devices ship from Lithuania. I would gladly take the longer time rather over paying more for shipping, but be aware that it can take some time to receive these if you are in a hurry or need them in time for a gift. There's no documentation provided with the devices, but I would recommend printing the information from the device's website to keep for reference as it contains all the detailed information. you need there. I imagine I will be ordering more of these again in the future. Thanks so much for a great product and outstanding service.

Christian | Nov. 6, 2018

Simple and works

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

Not a lot to add. It works, is simple to use and well documented.
I can only wonder why such a thing only exists as indie electronics.

Pavol | Nov. 2, 2018

Well done

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

After several cheap-versions from Aliexpress, the original works fine.
Watch out the pull-up resistors on both I2C lines, Chirp does not work without them.

Markus | Aug. 3, 2018

Great Product!

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Had ordered 2 exemplars v2.7.6... for a prototype installation... and they work like a charm (driven by Espruino JS mc - Espruino.com - IoT w/ JavaScript - http://forum.espruino.com/conversations/270246/).

Lithuanian Postal Service - AB Lietuvos paštas - https://www.post.lt/en/contacts/contact-us - could have been a bit more helpful regarding tracking of the shipment after it reached the postal service / entry office of the destination country, and tell me that I could used the same tracking number to figure out about expected arrival - may be it is just me not knowing that... :O - rather than just tell me to contact my local postal service office :(. The package seemed 'sitting' for 8 days at the destination country entry office according to the Lithuanian Postal Service tracking when I contacted Lithuanian Postal Service, but it was actually moving and arrived at my house on the 11th day after getting into the hands of destination country postal service. Total shipping time was 16 days: 5 days in in to get to the destination country postal service on a different continent, and 11 (ELEVEN) days to get to my place! Usually it would take 3 max 4 days... All in all: no (real) complaint!

Ryan | June 25, 2018

Awesome vendor, awesome product

For Modbus RS485 soil moisture sensor

This sensor is great. I currently have it tied to a pi (with a 40 foot wire) with the usb adapter provided, and it works like a charm. The data is currently being ingested into Splunk, and controlling a solenoid valve. I will be purchasing more of these in the near future.

Christian | June 17, 2018

Nice product !

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Really easy to use with the right library for arduino.
Compatible library with ESP8266 (NODEMCU for example).
Humidity is quite accurate, and stable. If request sensor every minute for example, no problem.
Usefull for IoT for example (connected plant), automatic irrigation, and so much.
I use only humidity value, because i bought rugged model, light level is always at 65535...
Temperature is quite high vs normal, i don't know what sensor is used, but not very accurate.

Good product in general...better price/quality ratio vs others on market.
I hardly recommand !

Gurhan | June 11, 2018

2 bought, 1 working

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I have bought 2 of these sensors last month and been experimenting with them. One of them is clearly faulty as in the water it reads 650-ish and when I put it in a somewhat wet soil it reads 700 and the value varies wildly, sometimes goes even higher. The other one seems to be doing fine for now, it reads 450-ish in water and reads about 330 (62% wet) in that same pot, so it seems fine -- but it also tends to go up a little bit (2-3%) every now and then. I wonder if this sensor is temperature compensated, maybe the problem lies there. Seller is a nice person though, I have been asking questions to him about the sensor (years ago) and he was very polite and informing.

J | June 5, 2018

Nice toy to 'annoy' others in there homes.... :)

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

This is a way cool toy to 'annoy' friends. I bought a couple and have placed one in a plant at my friends place. She hates small animals like crickets. So that was fun when something is chirping in there house :P. But also, as she does not know yet, the plant needs water.

But I have another non issue. I have real crickets in my house, and now I am thinking that all my plants are dry :P. The sound of the Chirp is that good compared to the real animals. So I have to listen good from where the sounds get to make sure it is the plant. :D

Further, the hardware looks very good and solid. I have used other and, yes cheaper devices, but they are way worse compared to this. So spent a bit more money, but you will get better stuff and more fun!

Daniel | May 31, 2018

Best soil moisture sensor

For Modbus RS485 soil moisture sensor

I got this RS485 sensor as a replacement for the I2C sensor, where I had issues. During our communication, the seller was very helpfull and obliging. After following the instructions, this RS485 sensor works out of the box. According to the provided Python library, it's also easy to use it on other software stacks. In my case, I want to use Typescript/Node.js on a Raspberry Pi 3. Using the avaliable open source documentations, you can search suiteable librarys for serial communication and get the data like moisture or temperature by writing a short wrapper. In my case, I'm using modbus-serial npm package. My wrapper class with all operations (moisture, temp, get/change id) has about ~80 lines of code.

The sensor itself works great for several weeks now. My software has a cron, which read the moisture every 5 minutes. It's very stable, upon now I never had any issues. My choice fell to the rugged version, so that no short circuits happen when the sensor gets some water during watering. I found no better sensor for those purpose. Only ones that are more expensive, analog (so you need an additionally AD converter) and morever proprietary (which in general I don't like).

In summary, I'm completely statisfied with this product. In the meantime, my first ordered sensor for testing purpose was extended by several new ones in a second order to monitor more plants :)
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | May 16, 2019
Hi Daniel,
Did you by chance release the Javascript code as a library for the sensor?

Alexander | May 22, 2018

Finally my first tests

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hey :)

after about a year after my purchase I can finally test the rugged sensors on a project.
I hooked up 3 sensors with different I²C addresses together with two BMP280 sensors, a relay and the MPDMv4.1 AC Mains Dimmer.

Unfortunately I ran into a problem which I cannot quite solve...
One of the three sensors is acting weird. It gives 1 or 2 right readings but after that it reports the maximum value 655... something OR stays in the busy state and stops working. I needed to adjust my code to actually grab these scenarios as it would lead to a infinite loop if it stays in the busy state.

Any ideas on how to check where the error is?

Anyway. These sensors are just genius! Love em.
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | May 27, 2018
Hi,

What is the controller you are using? Some controllers act weird with regards to clock stretching and probably this is the case. Try lowering the I2C clock rate as quick and dirty solution, also research your I2C library for ways to increase the clock stretching time. There is also a bug that was solved in firmware revision 2.5 where I2C communication was waking up the sensor from ADC sleep before it finishes the conversion resulting in the wrong value being returned. This also can be mitigated by slowing down I2C clock. Please contact me directly if you still have problems, we will try to work it out!

David | April 26, 2018

Review after 1 Year

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Bought 2 of the rugged Sensors a year ago.
The I2C Communication protocoll is very simple and the possibility to change the devices adress over I2C is very useful. But there is the first problem. I had it several times that the I2C adress changed randomly when i tried to implement other sensors on the same bus. This command should be better protected.
The rugged version is good but not 100% water resistant. The water comes inside along the cable and the glue of the shrinktube is not waterresistant. This happened to one Sensor after i put the whole sensor in the soil. Maybee its better to seal the whole sensor with epoxy.

Some other points:
- black sensor exposed to direct sunlight gives temperature results above 50°C. Surround it with white tape helps a bit. The best solution is to put the whole sensor 1-2 cm under the soil surface.
- sensor works below 0°C but the minimum value is 0°C
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | April 27, 2018
Hello,

Thank you for this through review!

Address change bug is worked on right now. All the sensors with firmware version 2.6 will have a fix for this. These will be hw v2.7.6 rugged sensors available in upcoming weeks.

I would like to seal the cable connection with epoxy also, but it's a major pain to handle cables while coating the sensors - sensors have to be cured in high temperature, etc. That's why we have decided to rely on hot glue lining of heatshrink. Hot glue is surprisingly robust as a sealant. Yours is the first report of failure, I would like to investigate it closer. Can you contact me directly about this?

0°C was a bug in the library - I have doublechecked it this winter - it returns and displays values below 0 no problem. Maybe the fault you experienced is somehow related to the failure due to water entering the heatshrink?

Thanks again for review!

Simon | April 12, 2018

Works as expected and very good service from the seller.

For Modbus RS485 soil moisture sensor

I bought two of those for a home project that I wanted to do early last summer. Unfortunately, there was some issue in the mailing and the sensors never showed up. Contacted the seller and he/she was quick on sending another set of two. The sensors finally showed up less than two weeks after.

I tried to connect those the cheap way by using some ebay C25b mini boards. I was never able to fine tune the modbus and kept having issues with some sort of debounce. I played as much as I could to get the serial port and modbus in sync but never got quite there. I finally decided to stop wasting my time and bought a 30$ FTDI usb to RS485. Done. Worked immediately.

My advice: save yourself some time and make sure you get a decent RS485 dongle and it will work like a charm.

Eric | April 1, 2018

Great product, great service

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Love the service. I'm looking forward to doing more business with this brand. Customer service was very helpful.

Guttorm | March 26, 2018

*****

For Modbus RS485 soil moisture sensor

I bought a piece of the RS485 Soil Moisture Sensor (rugged version) a month ago. I have tested the sensor, it work very well and I am able to use it on my already existing RS485 bus between microcontrollers and a computer. The shipment was quick, the source code (following website links) was understandable, the only thing I missed was some wireing diagram, so here is the correct wireing: black = GND red = +5V yellow = noninverting RS485 green = inverting RS485.
The cable assembled on the rugged version could be longer, 1 meter is a bit short, I would like it to be 2 meter for further production....

This serial communication sensor is the only affortable one I have found after searching the internet, so today I have ordered 10 more for use in an automatic irrigating system inside a greenhouse. Next year I am planning to expand with 10 more...

Great product, good value for the money!
Thanks to the producer from me in the arctic part of Norway.

Olivier | Feb. 28, 2018

Close to professional performance for a DIY product

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

We use both versions of the sensor as part of a demonstrator with our design platform 6TRON (http://6tron.io/homepage/) for a test set-up.
The rugged version is in operation for over 3 monthes and performs well.
We have packaged the non rugged version with different tropicalized varnishes.
These are under test.
The capacitive technology is well adapted for soil moisture sensors, and the choice of frequency permits good measurements for a low cost sensor.
There is a small error compared to a very expensive reference sensor, but it is acceptable.
I recommend the product.

Robert | Jan. 23, 2018

Problem with ESP8266 - big prpoblem 10 % errors of measuring

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hi,

The sensor have very strange data collection, there is no possibility to write any program (TASMOTA project used) that will collect proper data , 10 % of getting data is wrong not light only but temperature and moisture.

Charles | Nov. 10, 2017

great product. works as intended. great code examples

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Bought this moisture sensor for a smart farm project. I am growing lemon seeds and also paprika. I am using these sensors to monitor my plants and watch them grow. I had to solder on pins to the ends of the rugged edition leads, which was not much trouble. the code samples on github worked great, and was able to get this data flowing into my server very quickly. the sensors are nice and big and look durable. Very satisfied!
only negative is that the shipping was very expensive

Manlio | Nov. 8, 2017

Connection of SCL/SDA to Node MCU ESP8266

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hi Catnip, I purchased two sensors (sensor only without alarm), to be connected to my Node MCU (ESP 8266). I didn't find which pins I have to connect SCL/SDA to, in order to test with the sample sketches indicated on Github.
Any suggestion will be appreciated.
Bests
Manlio
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | Nov. 8, 2017
Hi,

For support please write me a private message over Tindie - this here is designed for product reviews, not for support. Also you can email me directly to mic at wemakethings net.

Henry | Nov. 8, 2017

Works great on an Arduino mkr1000

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I have 6 rugged sensors that have been reporting every hour for over a month now, I will update if any failures occur.

Frieda | Oct. 31, 2017

Amazing tech!

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

Extremely fast and safe trackable shipment, very good quality, nice documentation and amazing support!

Eirik | Oct. 14, 2017

Does not work as advertised

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

UPDATED: Catnip Electronics were quick to respond and send me a new unit. Very happy with their service. Having used my new Chirp for a couple of weeks, I am happy to report that it works perfectly. Accordingly, I have changed my product rating to 5 stars.

I've tried to use the Chirp as described here - https://wemakethings.net/chirp/ - without any luck. The CR2032 fits very tightly on the Chirp, the fit is so tight actually that the battery is damaged (a small dent on the - side). After insertion of the battery the Chirp keeps on chirping instead of making two sounds as described in the the manual, and setting a new dry point does with the push button gives the same negative result. Have tested the Chirp on several plants, and it is quite clear that it does not work for me.
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | Oct. 16, 2017
Hi,

Your unit might be faulty. Happens sometimes. Please PM me your order number, I will ship you a replacement!

Mike | Sept. 22, 2017

A much better moisture sensor, well made.

For Modbus RS485 soil moisture sensor

Much better and (hopefully) longer lasting than the cheaper resistance type. Bought 4 of these for use in poly tunnel watering system using Raspberry Pi. Good build quality, I sealed all the top and the cable connection in epoxy resin. If you're planning to use more than 1 sensor, ask to have the address set before shipping. Setting it yourself is not simple. But still a good product.
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | June 4, 2018
Address change bug was fixed at this point, there are no issues setting address to the sensor - you have to hook up sensors one by one and assign them individual addresses.

Pierre | Sept. 21, 2017

I2c Soil Moisture

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Meet my expectations, good product. Like any capacitive probe, it will have to be calibrated according to the retention power of the ground.

Michel | Sept. 13, 2017

Great product

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Works perfectly, I use a Golang program to communicate with it, the provided python example was really useful.

Charles | Aug. 6, 2017

Great capacitive sensor from a great seller

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I purchased the i2c version of this sensor for an outdoor plant watering project. It took me a while to get around to working on this but I have been very happy with the performance of this sensor. There are cheap resistive sensors out there but they will corrode over time and taking analog readings has limitations with noise and distance. These sensors can be sprayed with a conformal coating and completely isolated from the moisture of the soil. I had no issue with drivers, wiring, or sensitivity after coating.

If you are interested, I have fully documented my project and provided all hardware and software specs here: https://www.hackster.io/chipmc/smart-and-safe-outdoor-plant-watering-system-17d5c8

Thanks,

Chip
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | Aug. 8, 2017
Thanks a lot for the writeup! Good luck with your project!

Namik | Aug. 2, 2017

Really good and stable sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I ordered the rugged version, it's really nice assembled and works stable for 1 month now. Keep the good work!

Wen-Jong | June 25, 2017

Good design and easy to integrat

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I used it for my project on soil moisture monitoring. It works fine on my module based on Arduino. The module had been in the field for over 6 months and still function. I will continue to purchase this item.

Petit | June 17, 2017

Good job

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I'm very happy to use this sensor, is a amazing, VS dfrobot soil moisture sensor. Thank's a lot miceuz ;)
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | June 17, 2017
Thanks!

DFrobot have a capacitive soil moisture sensor that uses the same exact technique as mine sensor, just they brought it even more to the cheap side:
* they use 555 timer to produce the square wave at ~1MHz when mine runs on 16MHz from crystal/MCU - still low to account for different soil texture but still better than running it at 1 MHz, also more stable with temperature
* they use one diode to measure the peaks of the filtered waveform while mine uses two diodes measuring both peaks and dips to get almost double the range
* they use 1n4148 diode which is cheap, I use Schottky diodes with lower voltage drop and more controlled capacitance to get even more range and more repeatability across different sensors

All in all their sensor is at least twice cheaper than mine :)

Nilesh | June 9, 2017

Good Sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

The sensor works pretty well.The sensor gives 300 value in dry air. It also comes with temperature and light sensor.But the documentation isn't noob friendly. I had to spend a lot of time to get it working. I hope the documentation gets improved.
Some tips if the sensor is giving values like 65535:
1) Check if you have added 10k pull ups for scl and sda lines.
2) Check if the arduino I2C is working by uploading the code at https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/I2cScanner . If i2c is working you will get the address of the sensor. If it is not 'x20' then this is the reason the code isn't working for you. Now you can either change the address or use the same address.Hope this helps.

Thanks

Patrick | May 6, 2017

How can I2C Soil moisture sensor Domoticz

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Can you please provide more documentation "out of the box"?

I got to work your sensor with wemos & ESP Easy Mega 2.0.0.0-dev-perv8-dev.
I can see the values:
Temperature:13.90
Moisture:427.00
Light:65535.00

(1) => can you please provide information on what they mean/ what min/max values are / how they relate ?
(2) => can you tell me how I can connect it with Domoticz? It does not work with the "Moisture sensor" Template from Domoticz v3.58

Thank you!

Norman | April 29, 2017

Very good looking sensor - but need some help

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hello,

I bought 3 of the sensors in the rugged version and want to connect them via I2C to my home automation system FHEM. I connected the sensor to the I2C-GPIO from my Pi3. Via i2cdetect I see the sensor with the adress 0x20. I put the sensor in a glass of water and took a look with i2cdump at register 0. The problem is, that the value of register 0 is still 02 and didn't change. Also the register 5 (temperature) didn't change. Could you please help me?

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ i2cdump -y -r 0x00-0x05 1 0x20 c
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
00: 02 ff ff ff ff ff ?.....

In FHEM I get the following readings over all registers
0x00x
02 04 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF

Thank you and best regards

Norman
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | April 29, 2017
Hello,

Please write the support questions via "Contact me" button on the product page, not via review. You can email me directly to mic at wemakethings.net

Regarding your question - can you try the python based raspberry pi solution posted here - https://github.com/Miceuz/i2c-moisture-sensor ? Do all of the sensors exibit the same behavior? I would suggest lowering the I2C clock speed as the first thing to try.

Varun | April 18, 2017

Sensor is reading only 65535

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hi i recently bought a chirp I2C soil moisture sensor V2.7.4 and i hooked it up to Arduino Uno Like this
Uno Chirp
5V to VCC
Gnd GND
SDA SDA(10k Pullup)
SCL SCL(10k Pullup)

My Code is this
-----------------------------------------
#include <Wire.h>

void writeI2CRegister8bit(int addr, int value) {
Wire.beginTransmission(addr);
Wire.write(value);
Wire.endTransmission();
}

unsigned int readI2CRegister16bit(int addr, int reg) {
Wire.beginTransmission(addr);
Wire.write(reg);
Wire.endTransmission();
delay(20);
Wire.requestFrom(addr, 2);
unsigned int t = Wire.read() << 8;
t = t | Wire.read();
return t;
}

void setup() {
Wire.begin();
Serial.begin(9600);
writeI2CRegister8bit(0x20, 6); //reset
}

void loop()
{
Serial.print(readI2CRegister16bit(0x20, 0)); //read capacitance register
Serial.print(", ");
Serial.print(readI2CRegister16bit(0x20, 5)); //temperature register
Serial.print(", ");
writeI2CRegister8bit(0x20, 3); //request light measurement
Serial.println(readI2CRegister16bit(0x20, 4)); //read light register
delay(1000);
}

-----------------------------------------------------
My Serial port output is this

--------------------------------
65535, 65535, 65535
65535, 65535, 65535
65535, 65535, 65535
65535, 65535, 65535
65535, 65535, 65535
65535, 65535, 65535
--------------------------------

Would you Kindly let me know what the problem might be?

Regards
Varun
Avatar
Response from Catnip electronics | April 18, 2017
Hi,

How long if your cable? Also, please write directly to me - mic at wemakethings net. Please send me your order number, we will sort it out.

Rob | April 11, 2017

Very nice sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I bought 2 rugged moisture sensors. What I didn't know was that the light sensor cannot be used because the upper part of the sensor is covered by the black shrinking tube. I would suggest to use a transparent shrinking tube in order to avoid this. So the moisture level and temperature can be polled but illumination is a constant and acquisition takes long. The documented wire color codes did not match the actual colors. The delivered sensors came with following codes : Black = GND, Red = Vcc, Blue = SDA, Yellow = SCL

One of the sensors was connected to a Particle-Core. It worked quite well after having connected pull-up resistors on SCL and SDA. The measured values were quite stable. The sensor suddenly stopped working for no obvious reason. Testing the sensor connected to an Arduino Mega gave the same results. The other sensor is working without any problem for the last couple of days.

Despite of it issues mentioned above, I think it is a very nice sensor, much better than the cheap sensors that corrode in a relative short time.

Flavio | April 10, 2017

good

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

We are still testing the product, but seems to be o.k. and cannot report deeper on it.
The shipping and documentation was o.k. so far.
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