zephyr_ble_sensor VS b-parasite

I wrote this tutorial to answer my own interest in this topic. I hope it helps you with your inquiry. https://github.com/patrickmoffitt/zephyr_ble_sensor

I'd like to be able to design my own PCB (that would include a custom Capactitive Soil Moisture Sensor) with all the other hardware built in, somewhat like the b-parasite. But that's pretty far down the line.

Im working on a soil moisture sensor that I plan to fully bury into potting/etc soil, and the sensor itself wont be moved/abraded/etc like a typical piece of outdoor furniture but the ground/water environment is obviously not conducive to finish longevity.

Have you seen b-parasite? There is a sample that uses zigbee, and somewhere in the issues someone had used an NRF528x chip that had an attachable antennae, which may help your BLE connection issues.

Aha read the read me … https://github.com/rbaron/b-parasite/blob/zigbee-sample/code/nrf-connect/samples/zigbee/README.md

Im working on modifying a project for a capacitive soil moisture sensor, and im wondering how to perhaps increase the capacitive effect/range of capacitive values/sensitivity. What factors would be used to increase the capacitive effect? more loops? thicker loop? lots of parallel traces back and forth in lieu of the loop?