The Tuya SGS01Z is a battery-powered Zigbee soil moisture and temperature sensor aimed at anyone who wants to monitor their plants or garden directly from Home Assistant. It uses a capacitive measurement approach rather than the older resistive probe design, which makes it more durable over time and less prone to corrosion.
At the price point it typically sells for on AliExpress, it is one of the better Zigbee-native options floating around. You can get it on: AliExpress, AliExpress 2, Amazon US, Amazon DE or Amazon NL.
Package Contents and Disassembly
The Tuya SGS01Z ships in a small box containing the sensor and a printed user manual. The device follows the typical soil sensor form factor: a slim main body that sits above the soil line and a coated capacitive probe that pushes into the ground. It measures 161 x 31.5 x 19mm overall, with the probe accounting for 84.5mm of that length. A blue silicone sleeve slips over the main body, providing waterproofing and protecting the electronics from moisture exposure.
Once you remove the blue silicone sleeve, you can access the battery compartment. The sensor runs on two AAA batteries, which are not included in the box. The pairing button is also located beneath the battery cover, which you need to press and hold to put the device into pairing mode.
The PCB is neat and clean. Communication is handled by a Tuya ZT5 module [Datasheet], which was a slight surprise as the ZTU is the module more commonly found in battery-powered Tuya Zigbee devices in my experience. The ZT5 does have a better and more powerful antenna on-board compared to the ZTU, which makes sense for a soil sensor that needs to be installed outside in the garden, far from the coordinator.
The board also carries a C555I timer IC made by HGSEMI, a CMOS variant of the classic 555 timer chip. In this sensor it drives the capacitive measurement circuit, generating an oscillating signal through the probe and reading how that frequency shifts depending on how much moisture is in the surrounding soil. Here’s a close-up of both modules on board:
Home Assistant Integration via Zigbee
The Tuya SGS01Z pairs natively with both Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA without any external converters or custom quirk files needed. It is identified by the manufacturer string _TZE284_aao3yzhs and Zigbee model TS0601.
To pair, hold the button on the housing for 5 to 10 seconds until the blue LED starts blinking rapidly. The device registers as an EndDevice, which is expected for a battery-powered sensor that sleeps between reports.
Zigbee2MQTT
In Zigbee2MQTT the device is recognized automatically as model TS0601_soil_3, manufactured by Tuya. No external converter is required on any recent version of Zigbee2MQTT.
The Exposes tab gives you six entities: temperature (°C or °F), soil moisture (%), a temperature unit toggle between Celsius and Fahrenheit, battery percentage, battery state (low / medium / high), and link quality. Battery percentage notes that it can take up to 24 hours before the first reading is reported, which is normal behavior for this class of Tuya device.
Worth noting is that the Settings (Specific) tab exposes calibration offsets for both temperature and soil moisture. If you find the moisture reading consistently high or low compared to a reference, you can apply a fixed offset directly in Zigbee2MQTT rather than creating a template sensor in Home Assistant. Remember, these are applied in Zigbee2MQTT at app level, not on-device at firmware level.
ZHA
In ZHA the device is identified as TS0601 by _TZE284_aao3yzhs and paired using the zigpy.quirks.v2.CustomDeviceV2 quirk, which is applied automatically. No manual quirk installation is needed on recent versions of Home Assistant.
The device exposes soil moisture and temperature as sensors, and battery percentage under Diagnostics. Unlike Zigbee2MQTT, ZHA does not currently offer a calibration offset for soil moisture, so if you need to adjust readings you would need a template sensor in Home Assistant. You also cannot change the temperature unit from ZHA.
Sensor Testing
The SGS01Z is noticeably reactive. Pouring water directly onto the soil sends the reading jumping immediately, reaching close to 100% with a generous amount of water. Dipping the probe fully in water confirms a clean 100% reading, and pulling it out and wiping it dry brings it back to 0%. That full-range response is a good sign that the calibration is not clamped or skewed at either end.
I currently don’t have a similar device to benchmark it against, as I gift away almost everything I review. Without another soil sensor on hand for a direct comparison, it is difficult to say how accurate the percentage values are in absolute terms. That said, the data trends match reality. Watering spikes are sharp and immediate, and the gradual decline as moisture evaporates or gets absorbed follows a natural curve rather than dropping in sudden jumps. It reads like a sensor that is actually measuring something.
It’s worth noting that the reporting interval is not fixed. Significant changes in moisture trigger a report, so watering events show up in Home Assistant right away. But between those events, updates can come in anywhere from every 30 minutes to several hours with no obvious pattern.
Home Assistant Automations
The most straightforward use for this sensor is a low moisture alert: an automation that sends a notification when soil moisture drops below a threshold relevant to your specific plant. Since the sensor reports moisture as a plain percentage, the trigger is simple to set up in the Home Assistant automation editor with no template required.
For more context-aware plant care, the sensor works well with the Plant integration in Home Assistant alongside the OpenPlantbook database. OpenPlantbook provides per-species thresholds for moisture and temperature, and the Plant integration will flag when your sensor readings fall outside those ranges, giving you a dashboard card that shows plant health at a glance rather than raw numbers. I talked about this integration in the Apollo PLT-1 Plant Sensor review.
If you have multiple plants on a watering schedule, the moisture readings can also be used to gate an automation rather than running it on a fixed timer. A smart irrigation kit or a plug-controlled pump only activates when the sensor actually reports soil below your threshold, which avoids watering unnecessarily after rain or in cooler periods when soil dries out more slowly. Now that, is real-world use case for a smart soil sensor.
Verdict
The Tuya SGS01Z is a clean, no-fuss Zigbee soil sensor that works exactly as described in both Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA. Pairing is straightforward, support is native in both integrations, and the exposed entities cover everything you need for practical plant monitoring and automation.
The capacitive probe design is a meaningful step up from older resistive sensors that corrode quickly in wet soil. The built-in calibration offset in Zigbee2MQTT is a useful tool that can be used to improve the readings, should you find they are inaccurate. The good news is that the data trend reported by the device are accurate, regardless if absolute values are correct.
As an alternative, you might want to consider the new ThirdReality Soil Moisture Sensor Gen2. The first-gen is a highly praised sensor, and Gen 2 is supposed to be even better. Here’s where you can get both:
Also on Amazon NL, Amazon UK,
AliExpress, AliExpress 2.
Thanks for again a great review. Slowly thinking about getting a bunch of those, but we have around 40 plants around the house so covering them all would be time consuming.
Btw: in your summary and comparison card you have a typo where the Tuya sensor is stated with 1x AA, but it runs on 2x AAA.
Thanks, I must have missed that.
I’d say start with one or two, deploy and test for a while. Test range, reporting interval and if you like em than you get more.
Cheers
This is my favourite moisture sensor because it’s relatively waterproof and uses standard sized batteries. Good review!
Thanks, it’s a great device, considering others that came out in this category on AliExpress.
mine the battery is very quickly empty