Soil Moisture Sensor Node Development
Understanding what's happening below the surface is central to wetland restoration. Soil moisture shapes which plants take root, how water moves through a restored site, and whether the conditions we're trying to create are holding over time. Yet capturing that picture accurately, across different depths and across many locations, remains a challenge.
This project develops a soil moisture node: a sensing platform designed to measure soil moisture at multiple depths at each location where it's deployed. Rather than a single reading at the surface, each node will return a profile through the soil column, giving a richer view of how moisture is distributed and how it changes over time.
The node is built around an STM32 microcontroller on a custom PCB, and is designed to plug into the existing LoRa network at Tidmarsh so its data flows into the same infrastructure already gathering observations across the site. Low power operation is a core design goal, since nodes need to run unattended in the field for long stretches between visits.
The work grows out of Brian Mayton's decade of experience building and deploying sensors at Tidmarsh, and Brian is advising on its development. Future posts will share more about how I designed the node's electronics, results from initial testing, and planned next steps.