When Chirp detects that the soil is dry, it start chirping (it sounds more like a clicking than a cricket chirping to me). But then when you water the plant, it doesn’t stop. So you keep watering, trying to shut it up, and overwater the plant. It might help if we could water near it, but the manual says not to. I imagine it takes some time for moisture to spread through the soil to the chirp. Maybe we need a way to mute it for an hour? Pressing the button resets the set point, so that’s difficult. The led is useful in working out which plant needs watering, that wasn’t documented.

Roletta | March 2, 2021

What a lovely item!

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

We received the Chirps and are very pleased with these helpfull waterreminders. A nice modest chirp sounds when at first the plant is thirsty, no annoying sound, just a little chirp. If you ignore it, it sounds a littler louder and the interval decreases so it urges you to want to water your plant.

Love it!

For us, not so technical people, a little user manual with pictures would be nice. But nevertheless we managed to figure it out :-)

Roman | Jan. 15, 2021

Very good value for money sensor

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

After trying a number of other moisture sensors with little success, I ordered this one as it appeared to be well thought out and designed. Works very well so far, the remaining question is its longevity. For the price, it is very good value. I will be purchasing more of these.

Response from Catnip electronics | Jan. 16, 2021

Thanks!

Bernhard | Jan. 7, 2021

Sales and shipping ok product cannot convince.

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

The sensor is connected to an esp8266.
After a while, the data from the sensor cannot be read.
Then only power off/on the sensor help.

Response from Catnip electronics | Jan. 7, 2021

Hello Bernhard,

ESP8266 is tricky sometimes doe to bugs in its I2C protocol implementation - lowering cable length and I2C clock speed helps. Contact me if you have more problems.

Joachim | Feb. 12, 2019

Works well, would be nice if more "generic"

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I bought 3 of the I2C Soil moisture sensors, and have one hooked up to a Raspberry Pi 0 monitoring a plant. It works as expected. However, it is a pain to solder wires to it, so proper through-hole pads would be nice, then one could also attach e.g. a 4 pin header. The other suggestion would be to make the I2C version of the soil moisture sensor simply the same PCB as the Chirp with the beeper and battery holder not fitted. That way the end-user can always convert it later if desired.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Francois | June 18, 2016

Coating protection

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Hi
What do you suggest as coating protection on PCB.
Do you have a specific product to suggest ?
The product is good but an efficient coating is needed to make it last.
Thanks

Dietmar | Feb. 29, 2016

Very happy with the sensor.

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

The capacitive sensing part is a bit short but should work ok for the initial testing. I am planning to design my own sensor with a longer sensing area to measure deeper in the ground.
Perfect for indoor pot plants though.
Thanks a lot for making this design available for others to use. Very much appreciated :)

T | Dec. 1, 2015

Amazing product

For Chirp! - plant watering alarm

Great value for money, this tiny system just works. Once you know how to get the battery in and have set the moisture level, you are good to go. I will order more of these for my other plants. Great work!

It would be great if it had a plastic casing which can protect the electronic part with the battery. A small manual (if it is given as a present), is more than welcome.

Claus | June 28, 2015

Needs Improvement

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

At the First: Communication and service with the Saller very good ! ! ! ! !

Now my experience with the sensor: Sensor plugged in March 2015 in a plant. Everything was great value, top. June 2015 was the value at once extremely down without I have done something. Coating has come off (see photo).
I think moisture came in to the side of the layers. Seller has offered me immediately for free replacement!

I have very good feeling the seller will change that ;-) Review Image

Heiner | June 24, 2015

Finally - a soil moisture sensor that seems to work!!!

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I wanted to build an Arduino based automatic irrigation System for our garden for when we are not home. All was set up pretty quickly when I noticed that the sensors People are suggesting on the net do not give repeatable results.
I started w/ 2 nails in the ground, moved to 2 nails in plaster in the ground, then a low frequency Capacitive measurement.... nothing worked reproducible and / or linear to soild moisture. This Thing seems to do the trick! I Need to do more testing, but so far it looks good! Thank you! And thank you for fast shipment! Only complaint: A bit more documentation would be nice; I.e. how to switch from I2C mode to SPI mode; reason for new circuit on latest Version (i.e. using 2 diodes to capture pos and neg wave part, but why with completely different R&C values?) Anyway. Great Product. I hope lasts a while in the soil w/o corroding etc. So far the coating Looks good. time will tell.

Stefan | Dec. 12, 2014

Works as expected with Raspberry B+

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

Shipping of three ordered sensors was prompt, thanks! DHL, responsible to the transport abroad from Lithuania, took 1 week for delivery.
Sensor works and reports capacity between ~200 and ~450 exposed to air / wet soil.
Using standard I2C baudrate on raspberry pi B+ and unshielded CAT 5e cable I only could reach distance < 100 cm between raspberry as busmaster and sensor. Decreasing the baudrate to 1000 baud increased the sensor-to-master distance to more than 100 meters without any troubles, important to the intended application in my watering system of a large garden.
unload I2C-module:
sudo modprobe -r i2c_bcm2708
reload module with desired baurate:
sudo modprobe i2c_bcm2708 baudrate=1000
Great product!

For future versions of the sensor i would suggest to implement or add an interface better suited to bridge large distances, like 1-wire or RS-485. Most desirable (for me) would be some wireless network interface like zigbee, WLAN, bluetooth or similar, best as an additional module...
Best regards

Jeremy | Aug. 23, 2014

Great product, could have used a bit more documentation

For I2C Soil moisture sensor

I'm using 5 of those sensors connected to a Spark Core.
They work exactly as expected.

Some more documentation (I2C speeds supported, lack of a pull-up, a bit more info about the protocol) could have saved me some time.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the sensors and will most likely order more soon, to wire all my plants!

Response from Catnip electronics | Sept. 3, 2014

Hi,

Thanks for the review. Would you mind to share some of your insights about the documentation? I'd like to "plug the holes" in the documentation. On what speed did it work? What was unclear about the protocol?

I'm not familiar with Spark Core and none of my customers did anything with it before, your input would be highly valuable.