PIR motion sensor works poorly

I'm making a device that detects the soil moisture of a plant and tells you if it's too low when you walk past it. For that, I use a DF mini player and a PIR motion sensor.
My problem is the PIR motion sensor sensitivity is extremely low even though I turned it all the way counterclockwise.
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To work properly the PIR motion sensor needs at least 5V, so I thought maybe it just needs an externe power supply, but how do I connect that to my circuit?

Hi, @m4ui

What do you need a PIR for in a moisture detector?

Can you please post your code?
What model Arduino are you using?

Can you please post a copy of your circuit, in CAD or a picture of a hand drawn circuit in jpg, png?
Hand drawn and photographed is perfectly acceptable.
Please include ALL hardware, power supplies, component names and pin labels.

Thanks.. Tom.. :grinning: :+1: :coffee: :australia:

Perhaps he confused moisture and motion?
A translation tool problem?

For your question

so I thought maybe it just needs an externe power supply, but how do I connect that to my circuit?

You can take a look to how to use the external power supply for Arduino. Please do not forget to connect the GND of the external power supply to the GND of Arduino.

Another thing, I would recommend to use the screw terminal shield instead of bread board to make the correction stable

OP states clearly that the device tells you the plant needs water when you walk past it. ergo, PIR

the PIR sensor you have is inexpensive and neither effective nor selective. the PIR sensor will ignore a large human and trip on a cat.
I use those to trigger ultrasonic and RADAR detectors. I use it to save battery power by using the active sensor only when the passive sensor speaks up.

PIR is used for this:

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