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Chinese RS485 NPK soil sensor

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eni23:
Hey

I recently stumbled upon some Chinese soil sensors which claim to be able to measure NPK (nitrate, phosphorous and potassium) like this one: https://www.jxct-iot.com/product/showproduct.php?id=197 (they claim to be the manufacturer). They sell between 50-100$, which would be a absolute bargain for such a thing.

It is really hard to get some more information about those things, no teardown (they seem potted) or review as i searched. I found some docs how to use then: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19KSKdNDyZmARWAz-XHz9rnAY1IijCRcl/view but there is not a lot of info at all about them on the internet.

My question is, does anyone knows how they work and if they are any good ? (i doubt it) From my limited knowledge about sensing soil, this is a quite complicated thing to do so, especially when doing it directly in the soil, and they claim a accuracy of 2% and a lifetime of over 5 years which seems really impossible. There are legit sensors who are able to measure the claimed metrics with a accuracy of around 2%, normally it seem to be done with selective ion electrodes, which are quite expensive, degrade quite quickly and only work in aqueous solutions and need to be calibrated quite often. Those Chinese sensor seems to use a different "technology" since it only has stainless steel electrodes.

Any ideas/knowledge about this thing and the technology used?

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