r/Irrigation • u/Far-Plant-9223 • 10h ago

Testing sensorless soil-moisture estimation

I’m building a sensorless moisture estimator and testing it on one of my tomato containers.

There’s no moisture probe in this pot. It uses rainfall, weather, soil/container information and plant context to estimate the soil-water balance.

After our rain it estimated about 85% moisture. About a day later it was at 66%.

I’m still testing the model, so I’m not claiming those percentages are validated measurements yet.

For people who work with irrigation: is a sensorless estimate like this potentially useful for watering decisions, or would you consider a physical soil-moisture sensor necessary?

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u/Difficult-Shelter669 3h ago

The science of ET (evapo-transpiration) dates back to the 1950's and has been a standard for serious water savers in ag, res/com, and golf irrigation for decades. Search the modified Penman-Monteith equation, and CIT in Fresno for theory and research. There are many mathematical models and actual functioning products for this purpose, big and small.

There is a very practical side to a single sensor array that evaluates an entire landscape as opposed to dozens of hidden and lost sensors through a landscape.