I ended up relocating my GeoDrop device—my readings were just too far off to ignore. It’s been showing soil moisture levels above 90% for days, which doesn’t make sense. We haven’t had rain, and I only run the sprinklers twice a week.
Connecticut soil doesn’t make things easy. Mine’s especially rocky, and even with annual aeration and added topsoil, it’s nearly impossible to fully insert the GeoDrop device without first digging out the placement area and clearing pebbles. Even then, it’s a struggle to get it seated properly. That might explain the skewed moisture readings. But there is really no other way to get it in the ground.
If anyone has insight into this kind of setup issue, I’d appreciate it.
Also, in terms of future add-ons, consider adding a pH meter in the probes to better track lawn health—would be helpful to know when it’s time to apply lime or make other adjustments.
Sorry to hear that you had to relocate the GeoDrops Droplet. I will flag this for engineering for further analysis. From my observations with the GeoDrops Insider beta program before heading into the soft launch, folks in the northeast with rocky soil had to remove the large rocks in the soil before packing enough soil in between the sensor probes.
Hope this helps.
Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops
P.S. Regarding the pH meter, thanks for the suggestion. We’ll take it into consideration for future versions of the product.
Just heard back from the engineering team, and there are prompts on the installation screens saying that rocks larger than the ones indicated in the instructions need to be removed before installing the Droplet. Not doing so would cause the soil to settle properly for correct measurement.
Hi @MarkR
As you can see from the graph, while the device is in training, the moisture percentage is our best estimate and cannot be fully trusted since our AI is still learning about your soil properties. Those high readings are common during this initial training phase. In a future version of the app, we’ll remove the percentage during this phase and only provide a description of the moisture (e.g., very wet, wet, moist etc…) to avoid this confusion.
While we typically recommend installing the sensor at an undisturbed area in order to provide maximum contact between the soil and the sensor probe, that is not possible with rocky soil. So for your situation, because you need to dig out the placement area to clear the pebbles, the training phase is going to take longer, simply because the disturbed soil will need time to settle and make proper contact with the probes.
Now that you’ve relocated it, please allow some extra time. It might be helpful to lightly water the area once to help the soil settle around the sensor.
