Nice! Capacitance moisture sensor is totally the way to go. I've never ordered up a custom board with all the little SMD stuff. If anyone is making a big batch of these I'd love to find a way to piggyback on that order.
I am ordering 10000 capacitive moisture and temperature sensor boards with an microcontroller wired to 100 wifi and bluetooth gateways including labour and programming for around $5 or €5 per sensor. Most of the cost per sensor is labour so could be omitted.
If you want to piggyback onto this order or collaborate please send an email to morphle at ziggo dot nl.
We can lower the price per moisture sensor down to $1.42 when we order 100000 or more or by dropping labour intensive features.
At a shared/combined batch order of 1 million sensors we will drop to $0.30 per sensor. At this point it is economical to have a sensor per plant (or mecanically planted seed).
With optional starlink and solar panels and batteries for full offgrid operation. Custom software features in an app for smartphone or laptop with a https://microblocks.fun type programmability and spreadsheet graphs and website output would be optional.
We could add microphones and motion sensors to sense rodents or snails or monitor (rain)forest for illegal cutting with chainsaws or poachers.
Chiming in to day I would also participate in this order. I have a farm and would love to automate aspects of my irrigation and have been looking for something like this. This in combination with soil temperature would be very beneficial.
Often these moisture sensors (and other sensors here) can have high rates of error. Just something to keep in mind if you use it in a professional setting. But if they are cheap enough you can probably normalize out the variance and get a better reading.
Would you be interested in letting me ask you a few questions about what you would be looking for when automating your farm? I am working on an early stage startup on the topic please contact me at https://uverd.co/contact.html or leave a comment here. Thanks
Comments
Nice! Capacitance moisture sensor is totally the way to go. I've never ordered up a custom board with all the little SMD stuff. If anyone is making a big batch of these I'd love to find a way to piggyback on that order.
I am ordering 10000 capacitive moisture and temperature sensor boards with an microcontroller wired to 100 wifi and bluetooth gateways including labour and programming for around $5 or €5 per sensor. Most of the cost per sensor is labour so could be omitted.
If you want to piggyback onto this order or collaborate please send an email to morphle at ziggo dot nl.
We can lower the price per moisture sensor down to $1.42 when we order 100000 or more or by dropping labour intensive features.
At a shared/combined batch order of 1 million sensors we will drop to $0.30 per sensor. At this point it is economical to have a sensor per plant (or mecanically planted seed).
With optional starlink and solar panels and batteries for full offgrid operation. Custom software features in an app for smartphone or laptop with a https://microblocks.fun type programmability and spreadsheet graphs and website output would be optional. We could add microphones and motion sensors to sense rodents or snails or monitor (rain)forest for illegal cutting with chainsaws or poachers.
Chiming in to day I would also participate in this order. I have a farm and would love to automate aspects of my irrigation and have been looking for something like this. This in combination with soil temperature would be very beneficial.
One of these might work for you:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32689223035.html?html=stati...
https://www.amazon.fr/Corrosion-Resistant-Capacitive-Moistur...
If not I run www.openagriculturesupply.com amd would love to help find something that does.
I have a couple of these hooked into an rpi zero to monitor soil moisture under my house. They work, but wireless would be much better.
I should have linked these for you in the first place. They have a whole ecosystem of sensors that are all wireless.
https://www.seeedstudio.com/SenseCAP-S2105-LoRaWAN-Soil-Temp...
Often these moisture sensors (and other sensors here) can have high rates of error. Just something to keep in mind if you use it in a professional setting. But if they are cheap enough you can probably normalize out the variance and get a better reading.
I just want some for my garden lol
if your comfortable with soldering SMD - i have ordered PCBs from
https://oshpark.com/ they offer free shipping from memory - really cheap. i got these shipped from America to Australia :)
for 1 design - you get 3 pcbs (identical)
I would also like to be apart of the order. Automating my farm is high on my list of priorities.
Would you be interested in letting me ask you a few questions about what you would be looking for when automating your farm? I am working on an early stage startup on the topic please contact me at https://uverd.co/contact.html or leave a comment here. Thanks