Soil moisture sensor in Arduino - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Soil moisture sensor

📖 Scenario: You want to monitor the moisture level of your garden soil using an Arduino and a soil moisture sensor. This helps you know when to water your plants.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Arduino program that reads the soil moisture sensor value and prints it to the Serial Monitor.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable to store the analog pin number connected to the soil moisture sensor.

Create a variable to store the moisture sensor reading.

Read the sensor value from the analog pin.

Print the sensor value to the Serial Monitor.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Gardeners and farmers use soil moisture sensors to know when plants need watering, saving water and improving plant health.

💼 Career

Understanding sensor reading and Arduino programming is useful for jobs in electronics, IoT, and environmental monitoring.

1

Set up the sensor pin

Create an integer variable called sensorPin and set it to A0 to represent the analog pin connected to the soil moisture sensor.

Arduino

// Create an integer variable called sensorPin and set it to A0
// Your code here

Hint

The soil moisture sensor is connected to analog pin A0. Use int sensorPin = A0; to store this.

2

Prepare to read sensor values

Create an integer variable called sensorValue to store the reading from the soil moisture sensor.

Arduino

int sensorPin = A0;
// Create an integer variable called sensorValue
// Your code here

Hint

You need a variable to hold the sensor reading. Initialize it to 0.

3

Read the sensor value

In the loop() function, read the analog value from sensorPin using analogRead() and store it in sensorValue.

Arduino

int sensorPin = A0;
int sensorValue = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  // Read the sensor value from sensorPin
  // Your code here
}

Hint

Use sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); inside the loop to get the sensor reading.

4

Print the sensor value

Use Serial.println(sensorValue); inside the loop() function to print the soil moisture sensor value to the Serial Monitor.

Arduino

int sensorPin = A0;
int sensorValue = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
  // Print the sensorValue to Serial Monitor
  // Your code here
}

Hint

Use Serial.println(sensorValue); to print the value. Add delay(1000); to wait 1 second between readings.