THIRDREALITYSmart Soil Moisture Sensor,Zigbee hub Needed,Accurate Measure,Capacitive Probe,Moisture/Temperature Meter for Garden Planting,Compatible with Homey,Hubitat, SmartThings,Home Assistant

I recently had a problem with root rot in my indoor Tea Rose. I'd been looking for a zigbee soil monitor for a while and my discovery of this lined up with my holiday shopping, so it seemed like the time to give it a try.The Good:Connects immediately to SmartThings, and so will also work with most other smart home ecosystems.Measures both temperature and "humidity".Waterproof (safe for outdoor use).Includes a battery.The Bad:What the description doesn't tell you - this thing is HUGE. Way bigger than the illustrations let on.The default SmartThings driver does not include battery level, but the device does report it.The ThirdReality Temp/Humidity driver includes battery, but only reports temperature OR humidity on the icon (you have to open the device in the app to see both readings).The Ugly:Digital soil meters are still not very common. This means there's no standards for measuring soil moisture and no standards for when to water various plants based on that digital reading.Humidity readings are reported very infrequently and take a while to update when the moisture level changes or if the meter is removed and replaced.I've had this for a couple weeks now. Overall I like it and would recommend, but it's not going to immediately solve all of your over/under watering problems. Set your expectations.It's not clear in the description or documentation how this device measures humidity. However, the design of the sensor post suggests it's measuring soil conductivity, like most analog moisture meters. It's also not clear how the reading is calibrated. And of course there are no instructions regarding what moisture levels are appropriate for what plants (though this is understandable, since ThirdReality is a tech company not a gardening company). What all of this means is that you'll have to do some science: Water according to your normal schedule and monitor the readings from this device in order to "calibrate" yourself.Once you've gone through a few watering cycles and seen how this reads, you can set your automations or alerts accordingly.Removing and replacing the sensor will alter its readings! I tested removing and replacing the meter. The reading went from 36% before to 0% removed and 10% after. I dug down a couple inches to confirm that the soil is still damp down below. This is likely just due to poor soil contact with the sensor probe, which will improve with watering and soil settling. This means that once you've place it and started your "calibration", it should stay put; removing it will require you to "recalibrate".For a version 2, I think they could reduce the size quite a bit if they tried. A smaller sensor would be nice, and most of the size is to accommodate the battery. I'd also like to see a version that could be externally or solar powered to reduce battery waste. And updating the ThirdReality ST driver to display both temp and humidity in the device thumbnail would be nice. But most of all, including a chart of "ideal water levels" for some common plants would elevate this substantially, making it a lot more user friendly for beginners or those trying to compensate for a "black thumb" (including this in a custom driver would be AMAZING).Still, after all that, tl;dr: It's worth the $20 and if you're reading this review then you should get it. But let's also hope they come out with an upgrade.I will probably buy several more of these and I'm considering the watering kit too.

06-21-2025 UpdateSix days and the sensors are still at 100% battery. I would say the battery issue is resolved. They are working great. Third Reality really stands by their products. I am a big fan!06-15-2025 UpdateReplacement soil sensors paired easily with ZHA in Home Assistant. They have been running for 48 hours and are still at 100% battery. Much better than the 24 hour battery life of the previous sensors. Very pleased.______________________06-13-2025 Update.Third Reality reached out to me and replaced these sensors. Thank you. I just received the replacements yesterday. I will update this review once I have paired them and have run them for a week or so to see if the battery drain issue is resolved. Very nice to see Third Reality being proactive on this.______________________While this sensor easily paired with ZHA in Home Assistant, the battery drains in 24 hours; making this sensor unusable in practice.This is not a distance issue as I have zigbee repeaters within 20 feet of all 3 soil sensors that I purchased and all 3 sensors have the same issue.For comparison, the 2 Fdit brand zigbee soil sensors I previously purchased on Amazon have been connected and running 7 months on the same battery & they are further from my repeaters than the third reality sensors. Unfortunately, the Fdit sensors were no longer available, so I was excited Third Reality was offering soil sensors as I have had great success with their other products. Really disappointed with this Third Reality offering ☹️

So I knew this was a zigbee device which is what I wanted. I have a sonoff ZBdongle-P. I put the soil moisture monitor in my raised garden after connecting it to home assistant. It paired with home assistant very easily. I would say I am about 60' from where my dongle is and so I moved one of my sonoff power plugs to get a node closer to this device. I am literally 10' from it but it doesn't use the sonoff power plug zigbee network. It never paired to it. I removed and readded it to home assistant but it would just lose connection. I had to buy a third reality hub, pair it to that wifi hub and then I got my monitoring working. I believe the device is not calibrated well at all but now that I know that, it works for me. I will buy others now that I have a hub and more into the ecosystem. For the money it's okay and will work for me but if you desire precise calibration expect to calibrate it yourself. This requires a hub as you can't do it via home assistant and to pair it to their app means you need a hub. These devices are inexpensive generally speaking but in reality it can get costly in order to use the device how you might intend due to distance or walls etc. I will be buying more of these so that says something I guess :).