BME680 Breakout

Les Pounder in his quest to build a working starship, looks at another sensor platform for his data needs. Hailing frequencies open, captain!

- Les Pounder

There are many sensors on the market and by far the most common are those that measure temperature and humidity. Typically, these sensors use a myriad of connection protocols, from simple GPIO interfaces, to I2C and SPI. Yet by using many different sensors to accomplish a task we introduce more chances for problems occurring. So when the BME680 came out and promised to deliver an expansive platform of sensors in one tiny 3mm square sensor package, using just I2C, then we just had to take a look.

The BME680 Breakout is an add-on board that measures 26x15x3mm, and is suitable for all models of Raspberry Pi and Arduino. The board comes with sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, air pressure and air quality, which mean it can be used to monitor airborne organic compounds. The BME680 can operate and report temperatures between -40 and 85 degrees C, humidity between 0 and 100 per cent, and pressure between 300 and 110hPa (Hectopascal).