Would appreciate any insights you are able to offer, device 334KN9.
Been about 2 weeks, for much of it the device reported very high water levels and did not seem to dip, ever. I pulled the device, put in better batteries and it seemed to come alive. However it seems a similar pattern, it hasn’t really moved the readings in 2 days.
What I noticed is the graph function seems to have more recent and seemingly accurate data, but the dashboard seems off.
Currently both of my devices show they haven’t updated in 21 hours, but also the graph page shows more recent data as of 8am. Is the device displaying in my local timezone?
My 2nd device seems to not have this same pattern, except the no update I assume is temporary.
Just took a look your device. A few things I’m seeing:
Battery level is good. Actually even the previous battery level before the battery swap on July 1 (UTC time) was good. GeoDrops Droplet device is quite efficient and can use a battery down to pretty low voltage, so even the used battery you put in before would probably had a good 3-6 months battery life or so.
Finally, regarding the weird moisture level. The soil installation seems to be quite loose. I’d strongly recommend reinstalling in a new location.
This poor reading is typically caused by inserting the device into the same soil location multiple times.
For your soil readings, I’d suggest moving the device to a new location in your soil (at least 5 inch or 15cm away from the current installation location).
Pick a new undisturbed soil location, and try to install the device in a single attempt as much as you can.
Lastly, when performing deep watering calibration to let GeoDrops AI detect max soil moisture level, it’s best to either turn on your irrigation system as you would normally do, or if you water by hand or via a water hose, use a shower head. Reason for this is that it looks like watering has ended up washing more of the already loose soil away, so now the probe has even worse soil contact.
Just remember that capacitive soil sensors work by having a solid contact between the soil and the sensor probes. The better the initial installation (by not disturbing the soil, keeping it as stiff and tight as possible when inserting the sensor into the ground), the faster the reading will stabilize.
Any additional advice for me, only been 2 days since the relocation but initial data still shows still a large discrepancy between the three depths with middle depth dryer than the shallower or deeper. Feel this install was great to having undisturbed soil, first install did have a large rock I had to pry out. Each install is a bit tricky as at the bottom I have clay/rocks at about 3.75".
Just mindful waiting 2 weeks to still have poor soil contact.
When I moved, I did not clean out the holes in the depth sensors, would that be important?
I will defer to @homedigy-lawrence to answer the data reporting question. With respect to hard clay soils, I believe ice would need to be placed on top of them to soften them up prior to inserting the Droplet sensor. For rocks, I would advise removing them so that you have soil remaining before placing the Droplet sensor.
Let’s wait a few more days, I’ll take a look once the sensor readings have stabilized a bit more.
If your garden/lawn soil is only prepped ~3.5" deep (we see this a lot, please don’t worry), we’ll see how the readings turn out and go from there. We don’t need the entire sensor depth to have perfect readings, as long as the readings at the soil depths that you care about is correct will be enough (which could be either be the 2.5" deep location or 3.5" deep location, depending on how the readings turn out ths time).
Finally, please don’t worry about the suggestion from Stanley about “using ice to wet your soil”. That’s only useful if your entire soil is hard like a rock. It sounds like the top soil is already soft enough for the sensor install, then it should be good enough.
