As an FYI,
If distance/reach is an issue, one may consider a LoRa based Soil Sensor.
There is a community using these. I have only recently been trying these out, so can not yet attest to how well they can hold up to weather, water, etc. but they have been sprayed with a waterproof coating, which I believe is the manufacturer’s own special sauce.
So after all the discussion what is the best quality/price one?
@sparkydave quick question about this bluetooth sensor:
I have the gl-s10-bt-proxy (The Best Home Assistant Bluetooth Proxy: GL.iNet GL-S10 | Blakadder's Smarthome Shenanigans) with ESPHome, and is this sensor working with the Xiaomi BLE integration?
Thank you!
Yes, it works with the Xiami BLE integration. But make sure you select the bluetooth version for $20. The cheap for $6 doesn’t have BT.
Thank you! Just order it from aliexpress.
BLE Sensor arrived! Fw 3.3.6 Immediately discovered by HA, Bluetooth range seems very high using gl-s10 proxy. Seems a good purchase.
Question (if youre still around) - my computer recognizes it on ESPhome web, but everytime I try to flash it with ESPhome I get the error:
Failed to initialize. Try resetting your device or holding the BOOT button while selecting your serial port until it starts preparing the installation.
I tried to put it in Download mode (not sure how to tell if Im doing it correctly) but no luck. For Download mode I follow these steps:
Press and hold IO0
Plug USB cable. Wait seconds for boot
Release IO0
cc: @WallyR
What it?
Each board may have a different approach on how to get it into flash mode, so knowing the board is important.
On the chip I see Espressif ESP32-S2-SOLO or 21098-ESPS2SOLO
On the board I see SOIL_SENSOR_ESP32S V03
Apologies in advance, as Im new to setting up these boards. Hopefully this is what you need, let me know otherwise.
And for further context, I have the battery unplugged and removed the board from the case so the USB cable is secured into the port. Also made sure Im using a data cable and can see it as a USB serial device.
And for further context, I have the battery unplugged and removed the board from the case so the USB cable is secured into the port. Also made sure Im using a data cable and can see it as a USB serial device.
EDIT: Okay turns out ESPHome web doesnt work well with this board so I’m going to use Adafruit ESPTool to flash a bin. I will try to use ESPHome manual download to create the BIN file.
Any good projects for ESPHome I can reference for this sensor?
I used ESP flasher when I flashed mine, but it was ages ago, before the ESPHome web flasher became available.
I will see what is possible when I get back home next weekend.
I have not been totally satisfied with the soil moisture sensors that I’ve tried. I have tried some of the capacitive soil moisture sensors that worked reasonably well, but according to “Flaura Smart Plant Pot” on youtube, 82% are defective is one way or another. I’ve also tried the Tuya Zigbee monitors, which are a bit expensive if you have a need for several. Since the ESP32 and ESP32-S2 have capacitive touch pins, I’m going to look at using this to monitor soil moisture. I don’t need it to be linear from dry to saturated, I just need to know if the soil is getting dry and I need to water the plants.
For me the Xiaomi BLE ones work really really well. They can also detect Conductivity + Illuminance. Illuminance is not perfect because it is burried under the plant. But it is better than nothing.
They are not fully water proof though. I’m using them indoors + in greenhouse.
I have been looking for alternatives for outdoors. I purchased bunch of the Tuya outdoor soil sensors. The same shared by the original post. (https://a.aliexpress.com/_mMPGrfw) They worked great first but all of them started to fail one by one. The temperature starts to report crazy values. And then moisture as well. One of them consistently reports 95+% moisture where in reality it is around 50-60%. Still looking for a good one outdoors.
