Typically, the better soil moisture sensors are the ones that measure soil capacitance instead of soil conductance. That's because conductance is very sensitive to the ion concentration in the soil, and so, for instance, simple fertilizers screw-up the measurements, causing a need to calibrate. It turns out some, but not all, ways of measuring soil capacitance are less sensitive to soil conductance. Is capsense one of them?
It turns out some, but not all, ways of measuring soil capacitance are less sensitive to soil conductance
Citation?
polymorph:
Citation?
This link says:
"Frequency domain methods may also be adversely affected by soil EC. Some sensors separate the signal into a real and an imaginary part. The real part is due to capacitance and the imaginary part to resistance. Increasing soil EC is not a problem for these sensors because they measure the two components separately. Most capacitance sensors, however, are not able to separate the two components, so the resistive part adds to the apparent capacitance which can result in substantial error. The impedance of a capacitor decreases with frequency, while the resistance (imaginary component) is not affected by frequency. Increasing frequency therefore decreases the relative effect of soil electrical conductivity compared to permittivity. Thus, the higher the frequency of a dielectric sensor, the higher the soil salinity can be without affecting the reading." [Emphasis added by me as a TLDR]
So, with that as background, I'll try to repeat/rephrase the original question: would the capsense library measurements be skewed by soil conductance (salinity)?
Bump.
Some sensors separate the signal into a real and an imaginary part.
The cap sense library does not do this.
He's correct, you will need to use some other method to do this.