POGO Stick Soil Moisture

Probes to test soil moisture have been around awhile and many turf managers are using them. Stevens Water Monitoring has taken soil moisture testers to the next level with their POGO Stick.

What Is the POGO Stick?

Born of over 10 years of testing and development, the POGO Stick is the most powerful and useful portable soil testing device for a turf manager ever devised. Well, at least one that is affordable!  (Click here to visit the Stevens site)

The POGO Stick is a Wi-Fi enabled turf and soil insight tool that works in conjunction with an Android or Apple smartphone.

POGO Stick App

The free smartphone app collects data from the handheld probe for reporting, analysis, and storage. Data is stored in spreadsheet formats readily usable by Excel and other spreadsheets.

Stevens continues to add functions into the app. When using the app, emailing the data to your PC is the fastest way to transfer.

Many reporting functions are built into the smartphone app;

• Soil moisture %
• GPS location
• Location name
• Memos you enter
• Electrical conductivity
• Temperature
• History of logged readings
• Number of samples per zone/green/etc
• Averages
• Warnings outside of thresholds you set

POGO Stick Cloud Service

Cloud based data analysis (fee based) is also available from any device with internet access. Click here to learn more about the cloud utilities.

You still have all the functions built into the POGO Stick and the POGO Stick App. Added functions provided by the cloud service include;

• GPS mapping of each POGO reading.
• Pin/cup locations over time.
• Sprinkler distribution uniformity over time.
• Customized growing degree models.
• Optimized cultural practice timing.
• Reporting of historic data in several modes.

Three primary sensors are employed; moisture, electrical conductivity, and temperature. The sensor is the same as depended on by the USDA and NOAA. The technology has been proven by many other applications, Stevens has tied it together into an easy to use package at an affordable cost.

Use is easy. Insert the probe into the soil, click “sample”, then click “save”. When connected via Wi-Fi with your phone data is then stored to be downloaded on your PC. If using the cloud service, your data is there when you login.