  Soil moisture is an essential parameter in agriculture. It determines several
environmental and agricultural activities such as climate change, drought
prediction, irrigation, etc. Smart irrigation management requires continuous
soil moisture monitoring to reduce unnecessary water usage. In recent times,
the use of low-cost sensors is becoming popular among farmers for soil moisture
monitoring. In this paper, a comparison of low-cost resistive and capacitive
soil moisture sensors is demonstrated in two ways. One way is the calibration
of the sensors in gravimetric and volumetric water content, and the other is
the sensors' response analysis when different quantities of water are added to
the same amount of soil. The analysis shown in this work is essential before
choosing cost-effective sensors for any soil moisture monitoring platform.
