I ordered two Efekta sensors as well a week ago from Tindie. So far no messages that it has been sent.
Am planning to use them outside with self-vulcanizing tape.
Wouldnât sealing it with self-vulcanizing tape make replacing the battery really hard?
Well, for sure you need to cut the tape away, but itâs not difficult. Hopefully at least the battery will last the whole outdoor season.
No replies from the reseller regarding shipping times btw.
Exactly, removing self-vulcanizing tape is not hard and a thin layer can even be removed without tools
Ordered 2.5 weeks ago, and received a shipping notification last week, but tracking info still shows that the package hasnât been received by the shipping company yet. Looks like the seller is overextended at the momentâŚ
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Maybe a couple of cleverly cut thin rubber layers would do it? Looks like the 3D printed parts might sandwich nicely 
I got my EFEKTA. I havenât been too happy with it so far. It seems to be reporting quite seldom and the moisture value was off compared to VegTrug. VegTrug was telling me 36% while EFEKTA 92%. I would expect that 36% is much closer as it was already several days since watering and it certainly wasnât so wet. For some reason EFEKTA was updating only couple of times per day. I should probably repair EFEKTA and see how it works after that.
EFEKTA reports temperature, battery and moisture. You can see my data in the pictures. I first had it in and then moved to balcony.
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Lucky I just ordered two, hehe! But regarding the percentage value it really depends on how you calibrate the sensor. Think it would have been nice if the sensor would output the voltage value as well, not only the percentage so you can calibrate it yourself. Have contacted the developer about it.
My EFEKTA was acting quite badly in other ways as well. It wasnât staying connected and managed to show battery level 127%. Now I changed the battery and it seems to be acting much better. The original battery was unused but most probably it was giving too low voltage which could be seen from Zigbee2mqtt data as well.
With the new battery EFEKTA has been staying on and updating probably when the environment has changed so still quite seldom. Having breaks in the reporting for some hours even. I havenât compared the values with VegTrug yet. Iâll report how it goes. Anyway Iâm now testing VegTrug/MiFlora and EFEKTA to decide how many and which of them to buy.
This is the EFEKTA state as seen in Zigbee2mqtt
{
"battery": 100,
"linkquality": 255,
"soil_moisture": 96,
"temperature": 21,
"voltage": 3200
}
Hereâs a link to where the Efekta voltage to percentage is calculated. https://github.com/smartboxchannel/Plant-Watering-Sensor-Zigbee/blob/7a4614289fc2dfaa0a946a5197725970ecd6320e/PROJECT%20SOURCE/PWS/Source/zcl_app.h#L26 Obviously it is possible to compile and flash the sensor it the calculation is not what you want.
Looks like it is âhard codedâ to update every third hour.
Yesterday, laying out the updated version, I compiled several firmwares with different timings, from 30 minutes to 3 hours, now you can flash the device with the required firmware. BUT I would not recommend checking the level often, firstly it is pointless, since the soil moisture changes very slowly, in the second it is an extra energy consumption. I flash devices with firmware in which the measurement interval is set at 2 hours. By the way, I finished two more projects working on zigbee and based on this project. Mini soil moisture sensor with very small size and powered by cr2032 battery and soil moisture sensor with electronic ink display.
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@smartboxchannel Have you considered replacing CC2530 with new TI MCU like CC2652 or similar?
Should in theory make the battery last much longer and give it better signal range as well as make for more future-proof hardware with the potential of perhaps even using Thread, Matter (Project CHIP), and/or Bluetooth in the future as well.
Maybe use one of the newer CC2652R or CC2652RB multi-protocol modules from RF-Star or Ebyte?
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/237-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/189-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/list-196-en.html
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.html?id=1002
Hello, I am thinking about this of course, I have already bought several modules for experiments, but I do not know when I will start. I recently started doing something under zigbee and decided to start simple, and the simplest is cc2530. Of course, I understand that this is an old chip with incredible power consumption.
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More are likely to buy many of these if made an inexpensive CC2652 version with Zigbee 3.0 firmware.
Would also love if you could include a photoelectric/photoresistor light meter sensor (as a UV meter) as well as a temperature and humidity combo sensor (i.e. AM2302, Si7021, DHT11, or DHT22) on it.
Request posted previously to https://github.com/smartboxchannel/Plant-Watering-Sensor-Zigbee/issues
By the way, PTVO Zigbee Configurable Firmware tool now works with CC2652R1, CC2652RB, CC2652P, and CC1352P2
https://ptvo.info/zigbee-configurable-firmware-features/
https://ptvo.info/cc2652r1-cc2652rb-cc2652p-cc1352p2-configurable-router-firmware-748/
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PTVO doesnât seem to support the necessary PWM frequencies. Regarding the additional sensors, I am now trying to add support for shtc3 and bh1750
Any thoughts on including a [photoelectric/photoresistor light meter sensor (as a digital UV index meter)? Such a sensor would be used for measuring and calculating sunlight to evaluate sun exposure.
https://github.com/smartboxchannel/Plant-Watering-Sensor-Zigbee/issues/5
See example:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/jendeegan/light-meter-to-measure-plant-growth-conditions-7a12a9
These GUVA-S12SD UV sunlight intensity sensor modules look otherwise to be relatively inexpensive:
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-sunlight-intensity-sensor.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20211021025302&SearchText=GUVA-S12SD
@smartboxchannel Would it be possible to expose the raw ADC value of the soil moisture measurements to zigbee2mqtt as well, not only the calculated percentage value? Then it is possible to to the calibration in Home assistant as a template sensor yourself.
So, a couple of days ago I received my two Efekta sensors and they seem to do their job just fine. Received one with battery holder for 2340 and one for 2477, donât know why really. Since Tindie doesnât support IOSS thereâs custom fees added.
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