Soil Moisture sensor with digital pins

Those values are not so different, average 909 with variance +/- 1.2%.
All hardware has a tolerance. For soil moisture I would be very happy with this tolerance.

yeah since this post it dropped by 100 and few measurements later it went up by 100 againā€¦
itā€™s all funkyā€¦I removed the transistor, Iā€™m sending the VCC from the pin on the esp. and ground from ground and I know the measurements of the 3.3V with this sensor so I mapped it to thatā€¦ Iā€™ll see how that goesā€¦

this way there is little to no voltage difference when not in use which means the sensor will live longer and when I need I already send the voltage neededā€¦ again Iā€™ll see how that worksā€¦ thanks anyways for all the help you gave with this. :slight_smile:really appreciated!

Sounds like your transistor circuit is faultyā€¦ or at 50ms between power up and reading you are switching on and off too fast for the transistor?. I have had good results with basic 2n2222 for switching higher power items, and they are high speed, but I also donā€™t worry about 24/7 power to sensors. I just leave the sensor powered and cover all connections in dielectric grease (if outside or in high humidity areas). 24/7 power doesnā€™t kill the sensor, corrosion from DC & moisture does.

Over sourcing current from the GPIO pin may or may not hurt your ESP over time, but againā€¦ who knows for sure until it happensā€¦ and the MCUā€™s are cheapā€™nuff to replace :stuck_out_tongue:

Marking this topic as solvedā€¦ but feel free to add to it if you have more info.

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