Tindie

Avatar

Catnip electronics

3,959 orders since Dec 12, 2012

Vilnius, LT, Lithuania

Ships from Lithuania.

Custom Work Available

View Store

Overall Rating:

Review Breakdown

5
39 4
57 3
17 2
5 1
3

View All Reviews

Average Ratings

Product: (4.50)

Documentation: (4.04)

Shipping: (4.38)

Communication: (4.31)

All Reviews

Jay | July 1, 2016

great sensor, 3D printed housing

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

This is a great sensor for monitoring soil moisture in lawn and garden applications. I made a 3D printed housing that allows me to waterproof the sensor so it can be completely buried in the soil for long-term deployment .
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1654677

Jan | June 15, 2016

Very use full and reliable soil moisture sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

After a few weeks of testing, my impression is, that the I2C soil moisture sensor is a use full and reliable sensor. The moisture reading is obviously an indication of the amount of water in the soil. The difference between "dry", "moist"and "wet" is clear (several hundred "steps")
and can easily be used for watering or just sending out an alarm when time is.
The moisture reading is reasonable reproducible. I have not tested the temperature sensor as such, but it seems to be OK.

I'm sing a JeeNode running at 3,3V to connect to the sensor. The provided Arduino example at github is working out of the box. Remember though to add two pull-up resistors for the I2C bus.

The combination of a battery powered JeeNode and the soil moisture sensor makes up a nice wireless system for your garden.

Next step will be to cover the whole senor with some kind of adhesive lined heat shrink tubing to see if I can make the sensor water-proof for out door use - and still get use full readings.

In other words, a great product - I will for sure buy more when needed.

Jan

Rickard | June 15, 2016

Really nice product

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

After tried some cheap soil moisture sensors from ebay that i didnte get good values from a friend find this one and now i have 4 sensors in 4 differents plants and connected to one Particle Photon that then sending data to my webserver and i now working on a dashboard for it.

I have trying to do a good dokumentation for others to see for future projects on github: https://github.com/MyOrchard/SmartWatering-Hardware

Jeremy | June 15, 2016

Good little sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Works well and is easy to use. Definitely needs the additional waterproofing recommended in the docs.

Victor | May 25, 2016

I´m building a device for monitoring humidity soil.

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Is the second time I buy this sensor, I like that!!

I´m doing an device for the final work of the master. I have a "funduino" MEGA with four resistive sensor and three chirps. I´m having some problem with the code and the three chirps, It´s the first time I´m try to connect three chirps and other sensors. I´m using RTC and microSD card to stock sensor data. I´m feeding that with an adapter (9v/1A), the resistive sensor get into 5v intermittently, and the chirps get into 5v continually.
I changed the address of the three chirp (20,21,39), I don´t geting the reading of the chirp (65535,-10,65535). I think that a problem with energy but I´m not sure.
Can you help me??
Thanks, and sorry for my english.

Ashish | May 23, 2016

Pretty good perform at par or even better than expensive one

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Thanks for making this very useful product. I am using it now for more than 2 weeks and it's doing pretty good. I just wished if it could come weatherproof, I had to put epoxy as it did not look solid otherwise.
The readings are pretty consistent and in fact I had find better than sensors like VH400, which has better sensitivity across range however, suffer from variations outside of VH400 data spec: I need to put outlier detection.
So far I like them and I just wish if it could packaged more weather proof
thanks

Carl | May 16, 2016

Best soil sensor so far

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Everything works great. Only thing I can think of that is on the negative side is that the product description is wrong - the temperature sensor is not at the pointy end but is acctualy sitting where it will be above ground. Too bad since my secondary objective was soil temperature. Otherwise great stuff!

Sebastian | May 2, 2016

Great Idea turned into a product!

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Got an I2C Soil Moisture Sensor – and it worked right away.

The parcel was well packaged, the seller even sorted out a shipping issue at their own expense. Thanks again for that.

I consider this sensor well researched and developed. The design files make it clear that the designer did not simply go for the obvious textbook solution, as that apparently didn't prove practical. Instead, the sensor appears to opt for a robust and reliable method.

I had the chance to directly compare this sensor to two other soil moisture sensors, including one other microcontroller-driven capacitive probe that had also been implemented directly on a PCB. This I2C Soil Moisture Sensor easily beat them, providing a reproducible and noise-immune reading.

Benjamin | April 19, 2016

Cool gadget

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

Cool little gadget to monitor soil moisture and chirp when it is time to water the plants! Will buy more

Robin | Feb. 29, 2016

Thanks for a great product!

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Great piece of useful electronics. Works as claimed. However can improve on aspects such as size and usability.

Jean-Philippe | Jan. 6, 2016

Great product, really easy to interface with

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I already interfaced it with some bare-metal C code, Espruino, Arduino, ... The sensor is easy to handle.

I noticed a weakness in term of insulation. Does anyone tried to coat that sensor with a potting resin / hot glue / beeswax ?

I am currently building an autonomous watering project based on that sensor. If you are curious, just follow this link: https://github.com/yerpj/SmartWatering

Gilles | Dec. 28, 2015

Realy good product

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I use it with my arduino mega, it works great
And capacitive sensor Will never corode like others simple resistive sensor
I 've put 4 stars because i'm think it 's a little bit expensive..

Mihai | Nov. 28, 2015

Review of v2.7.1

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

First off, amazing product!

Finishing is really good and includes a silkscreen, professionally made. Good job.
I did seem to have a bit of trouble with it when using it with the Particle Photon. I needed to explicitly start the communication by calling begin (), so the beginTransmission(addr) was not enough.

A real shame is the time it took to get here (Germany). 8 days?! Can you please also add an express shipping option? The postman could not find me at home and could not leave it at my neighbour's because you sent it "registered" (only the addressee can pick it up).

Overall; crappy transport, amazing product!

Cheers,
Mihai

Geoff | Oct. 31, 2015

Works perfectly, fast shipping :)

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I purchased 3 soil sensors and they arrived in New Zealand within a week.

I would add though, that the Raspberry Pi doesn't appear to need to pull up resistors, and works fine on the 3.3 volt I2C pins.

To get the I2C hardware functionality working, I followed these steps: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-4-gpio-setup/configuring-i2c

I then used the Raspberry Pi code sample provided by Gerald, and it immediately started working. It would be great if the official documentation was updated with a Raspberry Pi example.

You can't use Python 3.x for this though - the Adafruit libraries don't appear to support it.

Other than that, it's a fantastic gadget :)


Klavs | Oct. 26, 2015

Great product for automatic watering system.

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I am making automatic gardener for my indoor plants. I am using Arduino Micro for control and small pump for watering. Before I used standalone version of this sensor, but I2C connection was hard to get. This model is perfect to read measures trough serial protocol. Sensor is working great and gives precise moisture values.

Gerald | Oct. 22, 2015

works after a few hours of learning :)

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Bought this sensor cause all other soil moisture sensors on the market are fare more expensive, so i wanted to give this one a try... had no experience with electronics before, i'm a software guy not into hardware till now, so to help other users after me, i will describe my setup (perhaps you can integrate this into the documentation)

i have a raspberry pi 1 (rev 2 i think, with 512 mb ram)
connected sda, scl lines and 3,3 v and gnd ... had to learn first that you do not need pull up resistors with the raspberry pi i2c ports...
got the newest raspbian image (jessie)
added "dtparam=i2c_arm=on,i2c_arm_baudrate=3000" to "/boot/config.txt" ...the low baudrate should be needed because of some clock streching bug (i don't know if i really need this until now)

after a few tries with the code from https://github.com/JasperWallace/chirp-graphite i started to code myself, because with the code from JasperWallace i got strange readings (wrong values after a few iterations)

so now my one great python code ( i started to learn python 3 hours ago :)
first i got the great i2c libary from adafruit: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Raspberry-Pi-Python-Code/tree/master/Adafruit_I2C
download the Adafruit_I2C.py and put it in the same directory with my code...

get my code in better formatting here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/go165cd3dhiapo0/i2c-moisture-sensor.py?dl=0 because the review system ommits whitespaces...
START my code =====================================
#!/usr/bin/python

import time
from Adafruit_I2C import Adafruit_I2C

deviceAddr = 0x20

i2c = Adafruit_I2C( deviceAddr, -1, False )

#to change adress
#i2c.write8( 1, 0x22 )

#to reset
#i2c.write8( deviceAddr, 0x06 )

while True:
temp = i2c.readS16(5, False)
moisture = i2c.readU16(0, False)
i2c.write8(deviceAddr, 3)
time.sleep(3)
light = i2c.readU16(4, False)

print "Temperatur: " + str(temp/float(10)) + \
" Moisture: " + str(moisture) + " Light: " + str(light)
time.sleep(1)
print "ende."

END my code =======================================

just simple code, no classes or more generic code, hope this helps someone...

btw. my readings
indoors, dry on my desk: Temperatur: 25,8 Moisture: 307 Light: 16022
indoors, submerged into waterglass: Temperatur: 21,5 Moisture: 733 Light: 18207

one improvment suggestion: wouldn't it be cool to have the same sensor with a 1-wire bus interface (i'm a bit scared about the whole bunch of cable i will need if i want to monitor the 6 flower pots on my balcony), btw any suggestion how to make the sensor waterproof??

Leigh | April 10, 2015

Great product, works as described

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I liked the easy interfacing with pin header interface. Very flexible.

Because it was hackable I've been able to make some program changes to suit me. I've loaded the AVR code as an Arduino sketch and that works too.

Because I'm adjusting the program it would be good to have some more specific about the capacitive sensor components and clock values. Most people probably don' t need that. I asked a question and the answer came back within a day.

Shipping to the other side of the world was about a week - excellent.

Sean | April 4, 2015

Makes Plants Happy In Their Pants

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

I ordered two for some frequently-forgotten plants along with two of the sensors (without chirp) to make Arduino automated watering systems. There is no indication which way to put the battery in, but if you're clever you should be able to get it figured out in two tries. After a day, one of them started a constant clicking noise. If this happens to you, it's because the battery is near death; replacing it made it work normally again.

Florian | March 24, 2015

everythings went fine

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Fast shipping;
sensors were well protected for the transport;
sensors worked from the first moment on with the script provided by catnip on my arduino uno;
i'm a happy costumer :-)

Dennis | Feb. 9, 2015

looks good - should encase the exposed parts in plastic

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

To prevent water erosion. Next version should have preset dryness measures

Greg | Dec. 1, 2014

Simple, elegant product that solves one problem really well

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

After using my first one for a few weeks I just ordered several more as gifts. Chirp is inexpensive and works reliably - just wait for your plant to reach the point where you'd water it, then push Chirp into the dirt and press the calibrate button. Next time the soil reaches that level of dryness you'll hear a chirp that repeats every few minutes. Chirp is smart enough to only chirp when the room is lit, so it won't drive you crazy at night. Water the plant and a distinct sound lets you know that the Chirp has reset itself and it's silent until next time you need to water. It's a very elegant approach.
The only improvement I'd suggest is adding the battery type (CR2032) on the silkscreen. Right now you have to navigate to the support website (which is very thorough) to find out what type of battery to buy. The device ships from Lithuania, which adds a little time to the shipping, but wasn't expensive. I paid $7 in shipping to have 3 sent to the US, which took 2-3 weeks to arrive.

Michael | Oct. 31, 2014

Works well, even with the TI Launchpad

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I've received my sensor a couple of weeks ago. Shipping was very fast.

I plan on building an automatic plant watering system and the sensor will come in handy for that. I managed to connect the sensor to my MSP430 launchpad. This step quickly revealed some gaps in my electronics knowledge. The documentation does not mention that I need some pull-up resistors. I assume that everyone but me knows that.

I still wonder what the minimum required voltage is for the sensor. I would save a little bit of power if I could run it at, say, 1.8V.
I did manage to scratch the protective coating on the PCB when I fastened it into my helping hands to solder on a header. Be careful here. Again, this is a probably not a problem with the product, but with my handling of it. Some nail polish will fix the scratch.

Anyways, if you want to know how to connect the Chirp/moisture sensor to your launchpad, go check out my project log: http://hackaday.io/project/3197/log/10509-connect-the-chirp-to-your-launchpad

Stephen | Aug. 28, 2014

Does what it says on the tin

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Wired it up and it was good to go; adjusted code from Jasper Wallace (https://github.com/JasperWallace/chirp-graphite) to get it submitting data to a MySQL database nicely.
Page 2 of 2
Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more.