Thanks for the update Andrew. I thought the temperature was being used to compensate the humidity values. I don’t mind that the temperature values are imprecise, but thought that explained the high variability of humidity values. Over the holidays I’ll have more time to test them and see if the values align better.
Anyone got the exact measurements in mm for the Xiaomi Mi Flora hardware board for comparision?
@smartboxchannel Do you have mm measurements for each? Maybe post it all on GitHub + Tindie?
@smartboxchannel: your plant sensors are exactly what I am looking for! I was astonished that something like this isn’t available yet from “mass production”. Any way, I ordered two sensors 
after reading the descriptions on tindie and reading the comments here I am not sure if I understand the differences correctly:
e.g.
-does only the “max” measure temperature and light?
-what is the difference between “mini” and “normal”? Is it just the size?
here are the differences which I understood:
mini:
Mini Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA (Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
RF module EBYTE E18-MS1-PCB (CC2530).
CR2032 battery. (so ~ 235 mAh)
“normal”:
RF module EBYTE E18-MS1-PCB (CC2530).
Long runtime with one CR2450 (so ~ 620 mAh) battery, it is possible to work on a CR2577 battery (950mAh)
max:
Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA Max(Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
RF module EBYTE E18-MS1-PCB (CC2530).
Light sensor BH1750FVI
Temperature and humidity sensor SHTC3
Long runtime with one CR2450 (so ~ 620 mAh) battery, it is possible to work on a CR2577 battery (950mAh)
I am limited to not providing a link to the “normal” one, as my account is new and only two links are allowed…
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@smartboxchannel Is it possible to use an external antenna in some way? Am using vulcanizing tape to make them weatherproof but experience some drop out.
For those looking for a waterproof solution (although it’s a pity to ditch such a polished 3D printed case!), these old 35mm photo film canisters are a perfect fit for the CR2450 variant Efekta sensor from @smartboxchannel. I picked the film canisters up off Amazon, and used some flexible sealant for confidence, being cautious not to come near conductive circuitry. Haven’t checked the outdoor range yet, but I can’t imagine the canister would be much impediment. I chose not to go for a black canister since the intended location can sometimes catch direct sunlight and I wanted to avoid a severe roasting.
I think this is still workable for me (since I can just redefine what “too dry” is), however, I notice that the Efekta sensors report much higher soil humidity values than the MiFlora sensors I have. Do others have the same experience? Here are the values side by side right after a watering event. The sensors are right next to eachother and there was enough water to pool at both sensors for a time before absorbing completely into the soil.
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Any ideas how to use it? mine shows 35C and 0% for a while, i use it with conbee and zha.
Yes same experience here. I seem to have around 35 % point difference. Efekta claiming to be more moist. However, which is more accurate I can’t tell for sure. Looks like Efekta is moving on a smaller area of difference than MiFlora.
At first, I thought MiFlora is giving more realistic values. Now looking at my values of a completely dry pot MiFlora says 3% and Efekta 39%. But when the humidity at home is 35-40% I can’t believe the soil could go down to 3% at any point. MiFlora seems to be at max 60% even after watering while Efekta is then close to 100%. Just speculating, maybe they report different value. What if Efekta tells the actual humidity and MiFlora on a range completely dry - plain water? 
It is a shame that apparently adjusting or calibrating the values is not too simple with HA. I think you need to do manual configuration.yaml configuration and create a new device and describe there how the values are corrected. I can’t tell the name of this feature now.
I do not know if it is worth changing the measurement range, in principle it can be done so that my sensor calculates the humidity value as mi flora.
I decided to splurge on the Spruce sensor mentioned in OP, it seems they only ship to a few countries though, which does not include the EU.
Hopefully a reseller or competitor will rise up to the challenge
2 Likes
I think it’s important to understand what is used as the reference of two dry or too wet (min_moisture, max_moisture).
When it comes to MiFlora, I think Xiaomi is serious enough to get the things right, so it should have done their homework while developing the product and putting together the plant database, and should have calibrated MiFlora sensor to align with that data. In HA you will more likely use the scrapped database from the app to define min and max.
We can’t be sure that DIY products like DIY_RuZ or Efecta could be calibrated the same way. Actually I’ve gone through the code of its firmware and found the only calibration implemented was for a variance of battery level.
BTW, unless the relative air humidity is close to 100% (where water can start condensing) it has little to do with the soil humidity (moisture). 
I don’t own MiFlora but I have a bunch of DIY_RuZ flower sensors, just arrived. I am going to use a customised Plant integration that integrates with the OpenPlantBook, which also seems to be a version of the MiFlora DB.
IMO, soil cannot be absolutely dry in natural conditions, so I don’t believe the MiFlora’s 3% can be right. It might be the case where Xiaomi had calibrated the sensor using not the absolute minimum in air and the maximum in water, like it was done by DIY_Ruz (Efekta) but the actual soil, relatively dry and wet.
It would be a good idea if somebody owning both sensors could perform a proper scientific calibration exercise to correlate measurements between two, for example, like explain in this article Capacitive Soil Moisture Sensor Theory, Calibration, and Testing.
@smartboxchannel Any updates about switching to CC2652(P) radio modules in all of your products?
CC2652 (and CC1352) radio modules from RF-star/RFSTAR and Ebyte which have in the recent year become much more popular as used by both commercial first-to-market products (for first-mover advantage) as well as DIY Zigbee communities since used in open source hardware Zigbee Coordinator USB and GPIO-Shield/HAT adapters by the Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA communities as well as being supported to be configured via the latest PTVO custom firmware tool.
I think their significant benefits over older the now obsolete CC2530/CC2531 clearly outweigh their higher cost for any new products. Especially when considering CC2530/CC2531 only supports Zigbee 1.2 and are close to end-of-life so have not gotten new SDK with security updates for many years now.
The benefits of CC2652 (and CC1352) is not only faster MCU with more flash storage and more RAM but much better power management and Zigbee 3.0 support, and of course, they keep getting updated SDK, which should mean if would be safer buy for the end-users as it can keep getting upstream fixes.
Since CC2530/CC2531 are obsolete and deprecated as in “no longer recommend” for new products which means that risk is there won’t be long-life firmware with security and bug-fixes via upstream/SDK.
For pre-certified radio modules, see these example:
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/list-196-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/235-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/237-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/236-en.html
https://www.szrfstar.com/product/188-en.html
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.aspx?id=766
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.html?id=1002
https://www.ebyte.com/en/product-view-news.html?id=1002
CC2652P (and CC1352P) version has am 20dBm+ power-amplifer compared to CC2652R/CC1352R.
For examples of DIY open-source hardware using these CC2652/CC1352 radio modules checkout:
https://electrolama.com/ / https://github.com/electrolama?tab=repositories
https://zig-star.com/ / https://github.com/mercenaruss?tab=repositories
https://github.com/egony?tab=repositories
https://github.com/codm?tab=repositories
https://github.com/Gio-dot/Z-Bee-Duo
https://github.com/cyijun/OpenZ3Gateway
CC2652P radio modules from RF-star/RFSTAR and Ebyte only cost ~$6-8 per unit if you order a few from Aliexpress and they will obviously cost even less if instead import in bulk more via ex. Alibaba.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003527541390.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001677721370.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001647897822.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001678003022.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001615475580.html
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002947088435.html
So my guess is their higher cost should not increase the overall BOM for the finished product by more than ~$2-5 if switch to using new CC2652P instead of using very old CC2530/CC2531 radio modules.
Just to clarify, CC2530 supports zigbee 3.0. I will probably change these projects to cc2652 or maybe efr someday, but definitely not in the near future, I just started playing with cc2530. Otherwise, it can turn into jumping from chip to chip, for sure something new comes out every six months. As for the ready-made projects on cc2652, I want to disappoint you, they are not in the examples of repositories on github that you have given. Compiling firmware for a coordinator or router
from the examples, Ti is not exactly the same as writing firmware for an end device.
The MINI version is the smallest sensor, its height is 12.7 cm. There is a CR2032 battery. The STANDART version is 14 cm high, there is a CR2450 or cr 2477 battery, the MAX version is the same as the STANDART, but has digital sensors for temperature, soil moisture and illumination. The PRO version differs from the STANDART version by the height of the case, since it uses AAA batteries, and there are also two more versions with screens on electronic ink. The 1.02-inch screen version(eFLOWER) has the same size as the STANDART version, the 2.13-inch screen version(eFLOWER PRO) has the same size as the PRO version.
eFLOWER - Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA eFlower (Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
eFLOWER PRO - Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA eFlower PR0 (Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
From the latest news about these projects, it can be noted that I started switching to cases printed using MJF technology. For projects with electronic ink screens, control via z2m (color inversion, time synchronization) is being tested. Getting the time from z2m, displaying the date, day of the week on the screen has already been added to projects, z2m converters will be updated soon.
MAX - Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA Max(Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
PRO - Plant Watering Sensor EFEKTA PRO(Zigbee) from Efektalab on Tindie
It is not possible to insert more than 2 links, it is unclear when a forum participant is no longer considered a new user. …
…Links to project repositories on github can be found in the description. I also forgot to write about one news - in the standard version, the transmission of air temperature will be removed, because it is read by the chip and is quite inaccurate. The firmware does not need to be updated, since the z2m converter for this sensor variant will be changed.
@smartboxchannel upgrading to a modern multi-protocol chips like the CC2652/CC1352 from Texas Instruments or the EFRMG21/EFRMG22/EFRMG24 from Silicon Labs would also allow you to add an optional firmware for the new Matter over Thread standard that is going to be very hyped this year.
https://csa-iot.org/all-solutions/matter/
Both CC2652/CC1352 and EFRMG21/EFRMG22/EFRMG24 support both Zigbee 3.0 and OpenThread firmware however not at the same time, so hardware is same but need two separate firmware images.
I think over a transition period in the upcoming years many/most IoT hardware manufacturers will be releasing both Zigbee 3.0 and Matter over Thread variants of their battery-powered IoT sensor products.
Hi,
all the tindie links are not working for me 
where can i buy the sensors?
how long will the different sensors run without changing the batterie?
Thanks!
And the AliExpress links are also broken. I’m guessing Tindie blocked all sellers from Russia. I just need to know which capacitor (voltage) to buy.