Contact Us

If you still have questions or prefer to get help directly from an agent, please submit a request.
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Please fill out the contact form below and we will reply as soon as possible.

  • Digital Matter Site
  • Contact Us

The Eagle - Soil Moisture Probe Setup

Written by Matthew Clark-Massera

Updated at January 27th, 2023

Contact Us

If you still have questions or prefer to get help directly from an agent, please submit a request.
We’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Contact Support
  • Home
  • Devices
  • Cellular
  • Data Loggers
  • Falcon and Eagle
  • Eagle

The Eagle is a battery-powered device that provides GPS asset tracking while catering for an impressive array of inputs and outputs and different sensor interfaces. It comes in either 2G or 4G LTE Cat-M1 / NB-IoT versions.

In this example, we are using the Eagle and an SDI-12 soil moisture probe to monitor the soil moisture by taking a periodic reading every 30 minutes. We upload the readings every 3 hours.

Wiring:

Input Voltage: The Eagles uses 4V - 16V with flexible options – from “off the shelf” Alkaline batteries to LiSO2 and 12V options. The internal battery can be used as a backup to operate when external power fails or is not present.

Red: Batt +

Black: Batt –

SDI-12: This interface is commonly used for agricultural sensors and measurement devices for soil moisture probes, temperature, electrical conductivity (EC) of soils and water levels / pressures.

Green: GND

Brown: VOUT

Blue: SDI-12

To set this up on OEM, the following settings can be applied:

  1. Advanced tracking:
    Tracking Mode set to Periodic Tracking Only. This disables movement tracking.
    GPS Fix Multiplier set to 8 – this means that the device will only get a GPS fix every 8th Heartbeat. Since the heartbeat will be set to 3 hours, this is a GPS fix every 24 hours.
  2. Basic Tracking:
    Heartbeat set to 180 minutes (3 hours) – the data will be uploaded every 3 hours
  3. SDI-12 General
    Power Up Delay set to 1 second – this means that the device will power the SDI-12 for 1 second before it takes a reading. Some probes may require a longer power up delay. In the case of very long probes, up to 6 seconds may be required.
  4. SDI-12 Measurement 1
    The address is by default set to 0
    Measurement Mask set to 0x03 – this means for address 0, it will take 2 readings (type 0 and type 1). This is the most common setup for soil moisture probes.
  5. Task 1
    Period Unit set to Minutes
    Out of Trip Period set to 30 – the SDI-12 will take a reading every 30 minutes
    Item 1 Type set to SDI-12 Sample
    To setup a Rain Gauge to measure the precipitation in an area, the following additional setting is required:
  6. Digital Input 1
    Set Function to Rain Gauge
    Digital Input set to Input 1 (as wired)
    Bias Resistor set to Pull-up
    Active Level set to low – this means that the Digital Input is “on” when the loop is closed, effectively pulling the input to ground
    Log on Active set to Yes – the device will log a record when this digital input is “on”
    Long on Inactive set to No – this effectively logs each tip. If you are using a see-saw rain gauge, set this to Yes.

Was this article helpful?

Yes
No
Give feedback about this article

Related Articles

  • Eagle - Technical Drawing
  • Eagle - Getting Started
  • Eagle - Wiring up a DM Temperature Sensor
  • Eagle Bluetooth Firmware Release Notes

Subscribe to Partner News

Subscribe to our mailing list to receive Digital Matter news, product and tehnical updates, and more.

Subscribe

Copyright © Digital Matter . All Rights Reserved.

Privacy Contact Support

Knowledge Base Software powered by Helpjuice

Expand