PlantLink Wireless Plant Sensor Indoors Outdoors. Works with PlantLink Basestation

Just purchased one to try out. I do not have the hub but do have it integrated with smart things. Kind of disappointed with the level of integration with ST as I feel only basic features are available for the cost of the sensor. Also I suspect the short length of the electrodes probably limits accuracy of the sensor to the top several inches of soil which may not accurately reflect soil moisture at lower depths for better rooted plants. Still it functions and gives me an indication of how soon indeed to water again.

This is simply not a dependable solution. I bought the PlantLink sensor with high hopes and use it with my SmartThings setup. I've run into two major issues:1. Selecting the right soil type and calibrating the sensor is difficult to say the least. PlantLink's site asks you to select your plant and the right type of soil for your plant. PlantLink has a flowchart on their website to help you identify the right type of soil by touch, but that didn't turn out to be very accurate in my case. I went out and bought an analog meter (such as one of these:  Indoor/Outdoor Moisture Sensor Meter, soil water monitor, plant care, garden,lawn  which doesn't depend on selecting a specific soil type) to help me calibrate PlantLink's values. After weeks of trial and error of changing the soil type, I finally got it to work appropriately, and notify me when the soil was dry, without waiting until the soil was too dry.... I lost one basil plant during this "calibration phase".2. Things worked happily for a few weeks. I connected a plant irrigation motor to my SmartThings home automation system, and anytime the sensor would detect that the plant was dry, SmartThings would water my plants. This worked great until I went on vacation for 3 weeks. During that period PlantLink accurately reported the moisture level for a week, but then after that the dryness level stopped decreasing. As a result for the next two weeks my basil never got watered, and died. Once I came back from vacation I realized this (the soil was completely dry but PlantLink was still showing it as "Good" moisture). After taking the thing out of the soil and putting it back in, it started working again for some reason and the moisture level shown on the MyPlantLink website plummeted. Unfortunately it was too late to save my plant.Basically if you can get this darn thing calibrated (why can't it work as easily as one of those basic analog meters?), then this works 80% of the time. Good enough to be a toy, not great enough to have your plants depend on it.

Paired with SMARTTHINGS perfectly.

I've got a bunch of these, 1/2 of them are dead. It works great, good range, but they aren't very durable.My small peach orchard, and my citrus trees are well worth the money.I suspect it's moisture, one unit was clearly wet insideconsider running a strip of rubber electrical tape around the junction.and why aaaa batteries, very expensive, hard to find (got them on Amazon) make the unit marginally bigger and use AA or AAAAnd there is no way of looking at the unit to see which one it is, so label carefully. It would be nice if the base station reported a "unit number", like a MAC address so you could be sure which unit is which.

Plant link is a gardener's best friend. As a very busy person who loves plants, especially edible container gardens, I find plant link to be indispensable as a plant care tool. Very simple to use and provides me with notification I need to keep my plants watered and thriving and tasty!

Sensor died in less than a month, very poor cheaply made. It's a lot of money for garbage!!