New Soil Max Moisture notification

Help & Support
1

I have four devices that showed a “New Soil Max Moisture” notification on the summary page of the app (336WL7, 337CYU, 336B7Q, 334RQJ). These appeared on 10/27–10/28 after receiving about an inch of rain on 10/25–10/26 (no rain or irrigation since then). All these devices were working well before the rain and these notifications. Since then, however, these four devices have shown erratic moisture readings and inaccurate “Watering Detected” messages. Additionally, device 3353U9 started showing erratic moisture readings at about the same time as the other four devices, but did not have the “New Soil Max Moisture” notification. Any thoughts on why these devices went from working fine to having these erratic moisture readings and inaccurate watering detections?

2

We had 3.5” of rain last week, and every one of my devices generated the “New soil max moisture” message. This despite my giving a very heavy watering when the devices were installed (I soaked the soil).

I attributed the messages to the fact that we had heavy rain, but also wondered why this didn’t happen the month before when we also had a short period of very heavy rain.

It is correlation (not causation) that these messages were generated shortly after a major update to the app. But the correlation seems to be very strong.

If others have had this happen, I hope they weigh in with their experiences, too.

Marsha Lehman

3

I was hoping Stanley or someone from Engineering would weigh in on this issue. It did seem to coincide with the app update.

4

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Top is example of one that got New Soil Max Moisture notification after rain event, and went erratic afterwards. Bottom did not have the notification and continued to work well.

5

Hi @kramekooc ,

I apologize for the late response. I have flagged engineering and will have an update shortly.

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

6

I also saw new soil max moisture messages for (if I remember right) 3 out of my 4 sensors following the latest major release. It didn’t bother me as we had significant rainfall when this occurred (1”+) and I have fast-draining Hollis soil that is very challenging to saturate fully.

7

Hi All,

There maybe two issues here:

  1. The “New Soil Max Moisture” notification is getting “stuck”. This is a bug and is being patched
  2. Raining cause the “New Soil Max Moisture” to be generated may also be a bug but would require further observation and investigation

We will post more updates into this issue as we look into this.

Thanks

Al

Engineering

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8

I continue to get the “new soil max moisture” notification, even though we haven’t had rain since last week.

Outdated Data due to Cloud outage?
9

Hi @mg.marsha.lehman

I think the patch should have fixed the stuck notification. Let me know if you are still seeing anything unusual.

Thanks

Al

10

Hello Al, thanks for the update! The notifications did disappear on the summary screen, however, the four devices that originally had the stuck notifications are still showing erratic moisture readings and inaccurate watering detections. I did an unscientific “finger test” in the soil of these four devices, and based on this the soil feels quite dry, but the moisture readings are oscillating between 80-100%. Nothing had changed with these devices other than the 1” of rain and the stuck notifications, so what could have caused the erratic readings and inaccurate watering detections?

11

hi @kramekooc

We are currently doing a fleet review of how users are installing devices so far. We noticed that many users were not able to install the device properly due to various reasons. Sometimes the soil may also be difficult to work with. Eventually we might come up with a different solution for this. Let me inspect your numbers and get back to you.

Thanks

Al

12

Hi @kramekooc ,

Thanks for sending the screenshots. They really help. As the engineering team is working towards the next update, we’ll need more time to fully investigate this.

Thanks for your patience,

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

13

Hi @kramekooc ,

Just wanted to give you a quick update, as it’s been escalated to @homedigy-lawrence to investigate. He will respond with more details once he has a chance to take a look.

Thanks for your patience,

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

14

Thanks for the update Stanley. I continue to monitor these devices. Only three devices seem to be giving accurate data (335WFW, 3358FD, 334RQJ). All others (336WL7, 337CYU, 336B7Q, 3353U9, 334K6P) have been showing erratic moisture levels and inaccurate watering events since about October 27 when I originally posted this. The only watering events we’ve had since then were November 6 and November 15 both from sprinkler system, and November 22 when we had 0.20 inch of rain.

Thanks!
Mark

15

Hi @kramekooc ,

Apologies for the late response to this, and I have already passed on the serial numbers when you posted them. That being said, as we work on the next version of GeoDrops AI, we may be slow to investigate this. I will keep you posted on the progress.

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

16

Since this release, it seems that every time we get rainfall of an inch or more, the sensors report that this is a “new max”. I have been “setting a new max moisture”, but am getting tired of this. And this fall is not nearly as wet as the spring was.

I don’t think the new max moisture message is “stuck”, but something in the algorithm seems out of whack.

Marsha

17

Hi @mg.marsha.lehman ,

We’re actually going through sizable changes to the AI engine, which may explain what’s going on with these notifications. I will relay this to the engineering team about this, and will let you know if there will be changes resulting from this.

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

18

Hi Marsha - Yup, this is one of the issues that I’m hopping to fix with the next AI update. I have learned that for soil that’s relatively loose, the field capacity keeps changing after each heavy rain (since the size of the rain ends up compacting the soil density, changing the field capacity % VWC point, prompting AI to ask the user to confirm if it should set a new max moisture point).

btw - to help clarify things, Stanley’s statement below is incorrect (sorry there’s miscommunication within our team)

Yes we’re going through heavy AI engine (Machine-Learning) data science model changes at the moment, but these are all happening internally, and has ZERO impact to our Production Cloud services.

Thanks,
Lawrence

19

Hi @kramekooc ,

I forgot to add that the fix to this would be implemented in the next version of the AI engine. Once that update is live, your device should start working as expected without any additional action.

Before I close this ticket, is there anything else we can help with in the meantime?

Thanks,

Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops

20

Stanley,
Thanks for the update. I will continue to monitor these devices and submit another request if something comes up. In the meantime, nothing else comes to mind.

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