Office plant monitoring

[LastSamurai]

@mfalkvidd Short question concerning battery life: I am using a custom board with an atmega328 and an nrf powered directly by a coin cell. When measuring temp/hum with something like an SHT21 the voltage drops are minimal (less than 100mV in more than a month). Using your sketch from post 25 here and connecting the fork to pins A1 and 2 (changed that in the sketch) I get a much higher power consumption. Any ideas why?
I guess the measuring takes too long or something? It also reports lots of 1% changes to my domoticz server... which is kind of strange. Shouldn't the threshold take care of that? Perhaps I have to use a higher value here...

[mfalkvidd]

@LastSamurai are you using the same sketch on both nodes?

The sketch in post 25 sends the moisture value every 10 minutes. There are no thresholds and no comparison to previous value.

Do the 1% changes look like a square wave? If so, the reason is probably that the pullup resistors differ from pin to min, even on the same atmega. A newer version of the sketch takes care of that, but I am still using the old version in my oldest node.

As we discussed around post 79, my node is dropping very slowly. It is currently at 3.117 V after approximately 9 months on the same 2xAA. The node started at 3.187V so that is a drop of 70mV, less than 10mV per month.

[Fat Fly]

Good morning people.
Can somebody help add to this moisture sensing sketch relay ?

[cattoo]

So does this work with 2.0?

[mfalkvidd]

@cattoo yes if it is converted.

[cattoo]

What needs to be added/edited so its converted?

[mfalkvidd]

@cattoo that is described in the instructions I linked to :)

[cattoo]

Its driving me crazy! Could you not convert this mfalkvidd! Its better to have your sketch on the front instead of that one there is there now.

[mfalkvidd]

@cattoo I won't convert it in the near future. I have too many projects that are more fun and more useful. My current setup works great, upgrading everything to 2.0 would mean a lot of work and no gain.

[Martin Tellblom]

After my other failed attempt I needed to try this.
I have a 5V Mini using A4 and A5 and a fork YL-69 and I get these result:

Direction: 1
Moist: 171
Direction: 0
Moist: 23
Direction: 1
Moist: 172
Direction: 0
Moist: 0
Direction: 1
Moist: 164
Direction: 0
Moist: 0
Direction: 1
Moist: 156
Direction: 0
Moist: 0
Direction: 1
Moist: 144
Direction: 0
Moist: 0

This is not the percentage value , its this value I print: moistureLevel = (1023 - analogRead(SENSOR_ANALOG_PINS[direction]));

Any Ideas?

[mfalkvidd]

@Martin-Tellblom could you describe what an YL-69 is?

How much time do you let the measurement settle after switching directions?
Which of the code versions are you using? There have been many revisions in this thread and they all work slightly different.

[Martin Tellblom]

@mfalkvidd said:

me do you le

My "Fork" is stamped with YL-69. Looks exacly like the XD-28
It's your code from post 25 so I suppose 1000 (#define STABILIZATION_TIME 1000 )

[mfalkvidd]

@Martin-Tellblom Thanks. You did throw away the middle chip and only use the fork, right? (as described in post 41)

[Martin Tellblom]

@mfalkvidd : Yes I did, and I have tried using A2&A3 and its the same

[mfalkvidd]

@Martin-Tellblom can you try another Arduino?

[Martin Tellblom]

@mfalkvidd
Have tried both a 3.3V and a 5V both behave the same.
I check every 30 seconds now and after about 10 minutes the result is 0 on both directions.
I restart the arduino and then one direction shows a value and the other 0.
There is proberbly something with my forks :)

Did I mention that I upgraded the sketch to 2.0? Could that be a problem?

[mfalkvidd]

There is proberbly something with my forks :)

They are (or at least should be) completely passive, so there is nothing that should be able to go wrong.

Could you post a photo of your connections?

If you disconnect the fork from the Arduino and measure the resistance between the two connectors using a multimeter (in both directions), what resistance do you get?

Did I mention that I upgraded the sketch to 2.0? Could that be a problem?

Not if you did it right :) I have no experience with 2.0 unfortunately.

[Martin Tellblom]

@mfalkvidd

I at the office right now, measure them when I home

[Martin Tellblom]

@mfalkvidd said:

should be) completely passive, so there is nothing that should be able to go wrong.

Could you post a photo of your connections?

Here is my setup. Using the Easy/Newbie board that @sundberg84 created with a 5V arduino mini pro 16Mhz. Using A4 and A5 to the sensor

Regarding the resistance when its out of the soil there is no connection at all. If I put it in the soil there a strange thing happening .
The resistance start around 10K and then slowly increase (no matter if I switch the direction) the longer I test the higher value.
If I switch the direction the resistance start from whre it just was and keep rising . If I let the senor pause for a while (5 minutes or so) it's back to around 10K.

Maybe I test it to often? Don't let the moisture get back to the soil?

[mfalkvidd]

Stange. The setup looks good. The soil in my plants doesn't behave like that.