2018 5-month SDI-12 USB adapter run

I conducted a long run (5 months) on an SDI-12 sensor with a raspberry pi zero in the months of June to October to test the long-term stability of my data logging solution. I was using a regular SDI-12 USB adapter, a Decagon/METER Group soil sensor model 5TM with dielectric constant and temperature sensors and I buried it in my back yard. Over 100K data points later, the ground was freezing and I unearthed my sensor and stopped the feed. Here is an overview of the data feed. Please click the plot to see a full-size screen grab.

The top plot is dielectric constant. Each spike represents a major rainfall in my area that made the electrical conductivity of the soil shoot up and then gradually die down. Each small step is when I turned on my sprinkler system to water my lawn (smaller than the spikes but still significant within a range of a few days).

The bottom plot is ground temperature, about 20 cm in the soil. The diurnal temperature variation is greater during the summer than during the fall, as represented by the larger amplitude oscillations of temperature at the beginning of the graph and the gradual reduction of oscillation amplitudes towards the end of October.

Despite of a number of power outages (can you even see them from the graphs?), the system worked flawlessly, restarting when power was restored. In retrospect, I should have invested in a backup battery such as this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M7Z9Z1N/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is charged by a 12V ac adapter and provides 5V power on its USB port. When the ac power is out, it uses its internal battery to continue to provide 5V power. For a small system such as raspberry pi zero, it could power it for hours.

If you wish to see the complete data set, here is the link to download:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4sry1pqwp9hdxuo/2018%20summer%20fall%20lawn%20data%20feeds.xlsx?dl=0

For more information on the SDI-12 adapter and data logging scripts, go to their dedicated page here:

SDI-12 USB adapter