InqWeather - Forecasting Weather Station

@huckohio I will likely not get around to building my remote moisture monitor this season due to health, but hopefully will do next year.

I am thinking it's the moisture deeper in the soil that is more critical as opposed to just sticking the sensors in the surface. I am thinking of making a housing of 8" sewer pipe stuck in the ground maybe 8 or 10 inches, then dig out the first 4 inches of soil and set the sensors in there. Probably need holes drilled into the last few inches of the pipe so that the ground water can penetrate. I can try to draw a picture if not clear, but as a gardener, I think you will get the idea. One problem I have yet to solve is how to keep rain out of the pipe without a sloped top that will concentrate water close to the sensors. What is needed is an infinite-height pipe that is only open above all the rain clouds. At the moment I am stumped.

Summary: Sense the moisture starting at -4" from ground level. 

@davee Dave, I am surprised you believe that 

merchantable goods were supposed to be 'fit for purpose'?

Do you not know it is legal for sellers to 'puff' (lie in our lingo) about their products? Obviously the right support their friends, but the mystery to me is that those we consider representatives of the common working man also go along with it. 

Hi Ron @zander,

re: 'fit for purpose'

   I fear another rabbit hole has just appeared, but the UK has a Sale of Goods Act, whose origins date back to 1893. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/56-57/71/enacted

that includes a section titled "14 Implied conditions as to quality or fitness".

Oversimplifying, if you buy something on the claimed basis that it has some useful property or ability, from a merchant, then if the object fails to meet that claim, then you are entitled to a refund. You might also be entitled to further costs, if the failure causes you to have further consequential losses.

Usually, the claim basis is that it was incapable of doing the job it was bought for. And whilst it is not expected to last forever in perfect working order, it should provide a reasonable length of service, before failing. 

Of course, there are lots of finer details, including (for the 1893 Act), it is the buyer's responsibility to inspect the item at the time of purchase, so that 'obvious' defects cannot be claimed for. Similarly, what length of service is reasonable, is as ambiguous as the length of a piece of string, for the original Act.

The act has had a few revisions since 1893, mainly strengthening the buyer's rights, but to the best of my non-lawyer understanding, the underlying principle still holds.

Since 1893, there are additions, like the Trade Descriptions Act 2011, which outlaws the sale of products or services based on misinformation.

Whether there are similar legal remedies for transactions outside the UK, I have no idea.

Best wishes, Dave

Posted by: @zander

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One problem I have yet to solve is how to keep rain out of the pipe without a sloped top that will concentrate water close to the sensors. What is needed is an infinite-height pipe that is only open above all the rain clouds. At the moment I am stumped.

@zander

I chuckled at your comment "as a gardener...".  My wife is the gardener - I can't even grow hair!  My job is to water the gardens and that can be time consuming.

I understand your suggestion of sinking a pipe into the ground to get the sensor lower.  I think I have an idea how to keep the water out of the pipe.  The picture below is a 4" PVC pipe with a screw cap.  This is the access point to switch the drain fields in my septic system.  

The same approach should work for the moisture sensors.  I can add one to the raised garden bed and another in the ground.  

Thanks again!  

@davee I can only speak for North America, but I will bet quite a bit it does NOT work like you say. Do we not have any members here from the UK who ordered 'fake' parts from Amazon, AliExpress or other on-line sellers? I suspect like us, the sellers all have return policies. Most might have free return shipping, but if they don't, try to use your 'Sale of Goods Act' to convince them to do so. Especially hard if the seller is a mom and pop seller as most Amazon are and all AliExpress are. UK laws mean nothing to them.

I didn't realize you were so naive, I hope my dose of reality does not upset your view of the world too much.

Really, you can do this for on-line purchases?

the buyer's responsibility to inspect the item at the time of purchase,

Have you never noticed (actually you didn't or you would not have written the above) that every maker of X (where X is anything from hand soap to a truck) claims their X is the best? If there are 5 makers of X 4 must be lying. Well it turns out the fat cats that own the corporations have had a chat with their friends in the house of commons or lords and convinced them to pass legislation that allows them to 'exaggerate' their marketing claims. It's legally called 'puffing'

If you ask Google if puffing is legal, here is the response.

In most cases, puffing is legal. Even when consumers don't like it, there usually isn't much they can do about it legally. Even in a sales contract, the practice of one party exaggerating their position, expectations, or predictions for the success or value of something being sold is permissible by law.

Don't feel bad Dave, most people have no clue about this, but as a programmer, it was my job to know things like this in order to produce correct code. In fact most of my time spent programming was spent learning how the users business worked. I learned a few very interesting things that would shock you.

@huckohio The problem with that or any other 'cover', is it concentrates the rain falling on the cover in the soil immediately around the pipe. This will give a false higher reading. That water on the cover has to be disposed of away from the sensors. I am thinking a sloped top with a rim and exit hole to a plastic pipe to direct the water at least 2 ft or more away.

Hi Ron @zander,

   I don't think I am that naive ... obviously big corporations have money and power on their side, so some will occasionally take the risk of playing tough with a customer, but that doesn't stop a determined customer taking them to the Small Claims court (up to £10000), nor does it insulate them from Trading Standards and other official bodies taking them to court for breaking the law.

Note, whilst it used to be fashionable to make claims like "X washes whiter" or "Y is the best", I rarely notice claims like this now, at least in the mass consumer sphere. Maybe this partly because the Advertising Authority has, and uses, powers to stop advertising claims that cannot be justified. Being forced to cancel an expensive advertising campaign for a product at the start is rarely a cost-effective approach.

You mention 'puffing', but I don't think that is the same as a genuinely misleading claim. An advert might say something is a 'Great product', where 'Great' is being used to make it sound better than it is, but it does not excuse something being called a "Watering Can", if it cannot be reasonably used for that purpose.

Is the system perfect and watertight? Of course not.

But deliberately misleading potential customers is far from a risk-free process.

I should emphasise that much of the protection applies to 'retail' customers. Business/trade customers may be in a different position. 

And I was careful to point to UK only transactions.

Amazon, AliExpress, EBay and so on are not simple merchants, and I agree the law may not have totally caught up with the worst excesses of such shopfronts. In particular, in many cases the 'real' seller may not be the these names, but rather an unknown, offshore operation, beyond the effective reach of the UK law.

However, so far, my personal, very limited experience of these outlets is that they have effective mechanisms to make small refunds when things have gone wrong.

So do I use them for small purchases, knowing I might occasionally get taken for a ride, and the Sale of Goods Act could be difficult to enforce? Yes

Would I have used them in a more professional capacity? Probably not, depending upon the possible consequences of a bad experience.

Would I trust them with a 'lifestyle-changing' amount of my money ... certainly not!!

Everything we do in life has a risk element attached to it ... I look to minimise my personal risks, but I can't eliminate them.

Best wishes, Dave

@davee A lot of people think AliExpress is risky, but here is my experience. I have had 54 shipments starting in Apr 2020. Total cost $1,706, Avg order $32. I even bought my Mini PC there, it was my biggest purchase at $256, the next most expensive was $101. The ten lowest cost orders were from $2 to $8 and a couple more until I hit $10. AT the high end after the PC were a couple of SSD's for $50 and $80. Out of all those orders, 2 were 18650 batteries that turned out to be fakes. Since the cost was almost as much as the return shipping I simply scrapped them. HOWEVER, I also had to scrap some 18650 batteries from Amazon. I couldn't return them as they were outside the return window. I only just got a proper charger/discharger capacity tester to determine what batteries are real and not. The charger is pricey, but now I can return junk batteries because I will test them as soon as I get them.

BTW, another common trick advertisers use is to test their product against another of their products. Since it's their own product, there is nobody to complain.

I am sure they have many more tricks.