I did te register to 20 and it started responding. I think it should be fine now. Thank You.
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xapmcs1Wire - 1 Wire (DS9097U / DS9490D) xAP Node
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ericvic
Originally posted by Michael McSharryI did te register to 20 and it started responding. I think it should be fine now. Thank You.
Eric
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Eric,
I tested the soil sensor in a controlled environment and saw a current range of -1.3 wet to -1.6 dry. The reading appeared stable. I then mounted the set in its intended location and extended the gypsum sensor by adding about 12 ft of cat 5 between it and circuit. The readings now are much lower and somewhat random in the range -0.1 to 1.2. I suspect the probe extension broke the circuit. Do you have any guidance for install contraints? Is the circuit board safe to mount in a burried enclosue such as is used for sprinkler valves. I know when I open my valve boxes they always have condensation all over. This type of environment usually kills connectors that are not gold.
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ericvic
Michael,
I figure that the capacitance and resistance of the cat 5 is changing the balance of the circuit. If you need to extend it you could try some twin lead (like what is coming out of the sensor). I know there are some people using sensors with 10' leads.
For moisture resistance you should be able to use something like liquid electrical tape or even spray varnish to coat the board. Just apply it after you have made all the connections and make sure to coat the board well.
Eric
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I extended it about 30 inches with twin lead and still have no success. I guess I will need to go to plan B as the circuit appears to be sensitive to this parameter.Last edited by Michael McSharry; July 27, 2005, 10:10 PM.
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ericvic
Michael,
I could see where it would be a bit sensitive but 30" should cause that much trouble. I will do some more testing and report the results.
Eric
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ericvic
Michael,
Nice graphs BTW. That is really strange. I have no explaination why it would act like it was getting wetter.
Eric
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With the gypsm not touching the soil then the current draw stabalized. I then placed it pack in the ground with 50% exposed and 50% touching soil. The current draw again went back being rather noisy. It looks like the wire is not the primary contributor. Since moisute content is a rather slow moving signal I think I will just add a low pass filter. I'll watch it unfiltered for awhile so I can get some feel for its behavior.
The charts are done with one of my xAP nodes, but it is the same core software that is part of the mcsTemperature plugin for Homeseer. The chart itself is easy. The intelligence around it to make it user friendly with autoscaling and labeling with a wide variety of data types was a lot of effort.
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ericvic
Michael,
Try it fully underground. The Gypsum Soil Sensors should be fully in contact with the surrounding soil. It shouldn't cause that fast of a change but I'm wondering if having the sensor exposed to the air is causing it to draw moisture from the ground and letting it evaporate into the air.
When I'm testing I don't have any graphs so I look at trends but may not notice small variation. I need to add some graphing capabilities to my testing suite.
Eric
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After running with the soil sensor for awhile it looks like it will be usable in my intented application. While the noise might be able to be filtered out, it looks like the sensor is more senstive to soil temperature than it is to soil moisture. One could rationalize that as the probe heats up the moisture level is reduced, but if this is the case then the probe would need to be burried sufficienlty deep that is would not be affected by surface temperatures. This depth would be below the lawn root level. When I chart the outside air humidity vs the soil sensor reading I also get a good correlation because the humidity is related to the tempeature.
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ericvic
Michael,
In the research I have done about lawn watering, it recommended to water to a depth of 6" to 12" depending on the type of grass one has. So your soil sensor may need to be buried deeper to best track the moisture. I'm not sure how deep it would need to be buried to keep the surface temperature from affecting it though.
The sensor does seem to track the temperature pretty well though.
Eric
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Not able to get 1.6.1 running right
I'm trying to get mcsOneWire ver. 1.6.1 to run for HS2 Beta but all I get in xap messages from it are a heartbeat and the following errors.
class=OneWire.Receive
source=mcs.OneWire.MAIN154
}
Receive.Error
{
id=B70000000549DC22
description=java.lang.NullPointerException
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