Soil Moisture Meter - update

I recently discovered a supplier of 3D printed enclosures for TTGO LoRa32v2 microcontroller development boards, and bought a couple. I have used a red one to give a completely new appearance to the LoRa link indoor receiver module. These enclosures are also available in black and dark blue.

The slot (top) is for a supplied fixing clamp ( not shown )

Having also upgraded the firmware, I am now uploading moisture data both to the Ubidots cloud and, simultaneously, to Thingspeak (see a previous post) without the Node-RED server.

From my Ubidots dashboard I can remotely turn on/off a green LED ( see image above ).  This feature could be used instead to control a solenoid valve for an automatic watering system.

Part of my Ubidots dashboard for the 'Soil Moisture Meter'

 

Soil Moisture Meter - real time data

I am posting here moisture readings in real-time using two of the widgets in my ThingSpeak channel; see 24 July. If the sensor, LoRa link and WiFi are all operational, an update is made automatically every hour when a moisture measurement is taken in the herb garden. Other changes I have implemented are two additional widgets in ThingSpeak to display LoRa link received signal level, and receiver module chip temperature. Also I have removed the previous dependency on Node-Red by modifying the firmware so that the receiver module sends measurement data directly to ThingSpeak.

Sending soil moisture data to ThingSpeak

My post on 8 June mentioned how I am using Ubidots with the Soil Moisture Meter to save and display measurement data on the cloud.

ThingSpeak™ is another such platform and, like Ubidots, there is a function node available for it in Node-RED which I added to an existing flow, making sending data to ThingSpeak very easy. 

I created a ThingSpeak channel called 'Soil Moisture', to receive and display the data. I have opened the channel to the public. So anyone can view the data by visiting ThingSpeak , then 'Channels' from the navigation bar, search for User ID 'SpacerLabs', and open channel 'Soil Moisture'. I invite anyone to 'export recent data' or 'add a comment' ; a ThingSpeak account is required for the latter.

My ThingSpeak channel 'Soil Moisture' displaying moisture data

Each channel can have up to 8 fields in use to hold any kind of data related to the particular application. I am using only 'Field 1' and 'Field 2' at the moment to hold the moisture measurement numerical value, and packet number respectively.

There will be a break in the hourly updated data if I don't have Node-RED activated; also the situation when using Ubidots.

More 'SpacerLabs' channels and sensors could be added in future.