A DOS attack from one of my moisture sensors!

[jamiem...@gmail.com]

I think I am the perpetrator of knocking out the server starting July 8. It is not really me, but the sensor alarms are blowing out thousands of twin messages toggling from "detected water" and "no longer detected water" EVEN though I have these features turned OFF. 

I ran outside and yanked the sensor out of the ground and dried the tip. The logs stopped. 

As with all my moisture sensors, I have it optioned to ONLY moisture detection

Screenshot 2025-07-21 202954.png

Water detection is OFF!

What is going on with this??

Looking in my event log, I see thousands of these of alarms from only one of my sensors, the "ws9Powder puff" I provisioned all my 10 moisture sensors for detecting soil being "too dry", and this is the only one throwing these messages. 

Here is ONE minute's worth of from the log file: 

ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:46 PM
LS 24: sq cooler
returned to normal temperature (30.8°C/87.4°F) by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:42 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:41 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:26 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:26 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:25 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:25 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:19 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:19 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:12 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:12 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:04 PM
ws9 Powder puff
detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

7:46:04 PM
ws9 Powder puff
no longer detected water by 118 Greenxxxxx x

I am going to seal these PCB tabs at the bottom with silicone. 

There is a software problem here! At minimum there should be throttling if any account is blasting messages. 

What is going on with the software? The obsolete soil moisture sensors are the only reason we purchased our system, I have 20 of these, but can only get 10 to come alive with a new battery. 

[Dave M]

I think I may have had a similar experience YEARS ago with a moisture meter that I used in my sump pump. I'm talking back in 2019 or 2020. It was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, it freaked out and was producing alerts just like you describe. I had opened a support ticket at the time and Wireless Tags support found a problem and fixed on the back end. I no longer have any of those types of sensors (the batteries weren't replaceable and I've since moved and don't have a sump any longer!). But again this is going back years and I can't find my support ticket for it. I do have some notes, though - in case Support wants to know, the tag at the time was named "Sump flood" and then I bought a new one and named it "Sump flood 2" - this was back around 2019.