Capacitive soil sensor panel

Capacitive soil sensor Hardware Design

About the Product

How many times have you watered your plants and feared you overdid it? With the capacitive soil sensor, those worries are a thing of the past!

Most cheap soil sensors work on the resistance principle, where there are two prongs and the sensor measures the conductivity between them. They work fine at first, but eventually begin to oxidize due to the exposed metal. Even if they are gold plated! Due to oxidation, the resistance goes up and up, so you have to constantly recalibrate your code. Also, resistance measurements do not always work in loose soil.

This design with capacitive measurement is superior. Capacitive measurements use only one prong, have no exposed metal, and do not introduce direct current into your plants.

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Repository Contents

This repository contains all design files for Capacitive soil sensor, organized as follows:

• CAD folder: Contains KiCAD design files, including:
  • Schematics
  • PCB layout
  • Panel PCB layout
  • Source 3D files in Fusion360, if any
  • All files are sorted by version with a detailed change log.
• OUTPUTS folder: Includes all production-ready files, such as:
  • Bill of Materials (BOM) and interactive BOM (iBOM)
  • PDF versions of schematics
  • 3D .step file of the board
  • 3D-printable models
  • Gerber files for PCB manufacturing
  • Image of the pinout of the board
  • Product image
  • Compliance, legal and generic sales documents

Refer to the Change Log in the CAD folder for details about updates between versions.

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Learn More About the Product

Beyond the repository, explore the following resources:

Soldered Verify

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Soldered Community

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solde.red

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here’s how you can get involved:

• Submit pull requests to enhance the design or fix issues.
• Report bugs or problems by opening an issue.

We encourage community collaboration to make this product even better.

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About Soldered

Soldered for Makers specializes in designing and manufacturing electronic products tailored for enthusiasts, ranging from hobbyists to professionals. Our portfolio includes electronic boards, sensors, and actuators that are widely utilized in fields such as microelectronics, mechatronics, robotics, programming, and IoT. Every product we offer is designed in-house and built upon open-source hardware and software platforms. Proudly certified and manufactured within the European Union, our catalog likely includes the product you need for your project.

We complement these products with comprehensive tutorials and manuals, product descriptions, schematics, programming codes, and project examples. Our round-the-clock customer and technical support is available for all our products, irrespective of the sales channel. Soldered’s success and services reflect our maker community’s unwavering trust, for which we are deeply grateful. Join our community and create using Soldered products.

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License

All Soldered open-source hardware (OSH) is under The TAPR Open Hardware License. Read more in the LICENSE file located in this repository.

Disclaimer:

No warranty - all designs in this repository are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but without any warranty. They are provided "AS IS", therefore without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. The entire quality and performance of what you do with the contents of this repository are your responsibility. In no event Soldered Electronics will be liable for your damages, or losses, including any general, special, incidental, or consequential damage arising out of the use or inability to use the contents of this repository.

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Have fun!

Thank you for your support from your fellow makers at Soldered Electronics.

Happy Making!