THIRDREALITY Smart Soil Moisture Sensor,Zigbee hub Needed,Accurate Measure,Capacitive Probe,Moisture/Temperature Meter for Garden Planting,Compatible with Homey,Hubitat, SmartThings,Home Assistant

I recently had a problem with root rot in my indoor Tea Rose. I'd been looking for a zigbee soil monitor for a while and my discovery of this lined up with my holiday shopping, so it seemed like the time to give it a try. The Good: Connects immediately to SmartThings, and so will also work with most other smart home ecosystems. Measures both temperature and "humidity". Waterproof (safe for outdoor use). Includes a battery. The Bad: What the description doesn't tell you - this thing is HUGE. Way bigger than the illustrations let on. The default SmartThings driver does not include battery level, but the device does report it. The ThirdReality Temp/Humidity driver includes battery, but only reports temperature OR humidity on the icon (you have to open the device in the app to see both readings). The Ugly: Digital soil meters are still not very common. This means there's no standards for measuring soil moisture and no standards for when to water various plants based on that digital reading. Humidity readings are reported very infrequently and take a while to update when the moisture level changes or if the meter is removed and replaced. I've had this for a couple weeks now. Overall I like it and would recommend, but it's not going to immediately solve all of your over/under watering problems. Set your expectations. It's not clear in the description or documentation how this device measures humidity. However, the design of the sensor post suggests it's measuring soil conductivity, like most analog moisture meters. It's also not clear how the reading is calibrated. And of course there are no instructions regarding what moisture levels are appropriate for what plants (though this is understandable, since ThirdReality is a tech company not a gardening company). What all of this means is that you'll have to do some science: Water according to your normal schedule and monitor the readings from this device in order to "calibrate" yourself. Once you've gone through a few watering cycles and seen how this reads, you can set your automations or alerts accordingly. Removing and replacing the sensor will alter its readings! I tested removing and replacing the meter. The reading went from 36% before to 0% removed and 10% after. I dug down a couple inches to confirm that the soil is still damp down below. This is likely just due to poor soil contact with the sensor probe, which will improve with watering and soil settling. This means that once you've place it and started your "calibration", it should stay put; removing it will require you to "recalibrate". For a version 2, I think they could reduce the size quite a bit if they tried. A smaller sensor would be nice, and most of the size is to accommodate the battery. I'd also like to see a version that could be externally or solar powered to reduce battery waste. And updating the ThirdReality ST driver to display both temp and humidity in the device thumbnail would be nice. But most of all, including a chart of "ideal water levels" for some common plants would elevate this substantially, making it a lot more user friendly for beginners or those trying to compensate for a "black thumb" (including this in a custom driver would be AMAZING). Still, after all that, tl;dr: It's worth the $20 and if you're reading this review then you should get it. But let's also hope they come out with an upgrade. I will probably buy several more of these and I'm considering the watering kit too.

I have two of these running in my front‑yard pots, and they work well as long as they can get a Zigbee signal. One is paired with a TUYA Zigbee hub and the other with the Home Assistant Connect ZBT‑1. I use rechargeable Ni‑MH batteries, and they last a reasonable amount of time. They report temperature, soil moisture, and battery level every few minutes. The temperature reading isn’t very accurate, and the moisture value is more of a reference than a precise measurement. In Home Assistant, I set up a notification when moisture drops below around 50%. During the summer, I use that reading to automatically run the sprinklers for 15 minutes. Soil density affects the moisture reading, so it’s worth checking that the value doesn’t change too much if you pull the sensor out and put it back in the ground. I’ve tried a bunch of capacitive soil‑moisture sensors, and these perform about as well as anything else I’ve tested. If you can get a Zigbee router outdoors, you’re good to go. I use USB‑powered devices indoors, but I’m sure these would work fine in the house too. The first one I bought has been running for over a year.

So I knew this was a zigbee device which is what I wanted. I have a sonoff ZBdongle-P. I put the soil moisture monitor in my raised garden after connecting it to home assistant. It paired with home assistant very easily. I would say I am about 60' from where my dongle is and so I moved one of my sonoff power plugs to get a node closer to this device. I am literally 10' from it but it doesn't use the sonoff power plug zigbee network. It never paired to it. I removed and readded it to home assistant but it would just lose connection. I had to buy a third reality hub, pair it to that wifi hub and then I got my monitoring working. I believe the device is not calibrated well at all but now that I know that, it works for me. I will buy others now that I have a hub and more into the ecosystem. For the money it's okay and will work for me but if you desire precise calibration expect to calibrate it yourself. This requires a hub as you can't do it via home assistant and to pair it to their app means you need a hub. These devices are inexpensive generally speaking but in reality it can get costly in order to use the device how you might intend due to distance or walls etc. I will be buying more of these so that says something I guess :).

werkt perfect! Gekoppeld aan Homey krijgen m'n planten nu op tijd (maar niet te vroeg) water. Koppelen gaat eenvoudig en verbinding is stabiel

works great with Deconz and Home Assistant providing soil humidity and soil temperature. The baterry seems to go down a bit fast (it came with a Amazon basic "industrial" battery - not sure how good that is) - in two weeks it went down from 100% to 82%. Will probably move to rechargable.

I use these with Zigbee2Mqtt + Openhab / NodeRed to feed my Netro garden irrigation system. This device monitors soil moisture and Netro has the rules to turn on/off irrigation. Requires some initial effort (eg zigbee pairing, firmware update, calibration, offset values, optimizing reporting to maximize battery - I consider these normal for a zigbee device). Rock solid after the initial setup.

Great to detect soil moisture. Just unscrew the top, put it in pairing mode and you are off to the races. It is a bit on the big side. Not sure how to test its accuracy, but does tell me when soil is dry. Will pull these out of my pots and put the in the garden in the spring as they seem totally water proof. Little on the expensive side, but it looks like a good quality product. Just fyi, this is zigbee not standard wifi.

Buen sensor para conectar por Zigbee. Es un pelín grande, pero no afecta incluso para tiestos pequeños