Skip to content

BME280 — temperature, humidity and pressure

Being prepared

Chosen for the catalogue; the driver has not shipped yet. The figures below still need checking against the datasheet.

What it does

Three measurements from one part the size of a grain of rice: air temperature, relative humidity and barometric pressure. It is the usual first sensor on any board that has to know something about the room it is in — a cabinet, a greenhouse, a boiler room.

The pressure reading is good enough to see weather changing and to work out altitude to within a metre or so, which is more often useful than it sounds.

Parameters

Measures Temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure
Temperature range −40 … 85 °C
Humidity range 0 … 100 %RH
Pressure range 300 … 1100 hPa
Interface I²C or SPI

Bus and addressing

I²C, address 0x76 or 0x77, chosen by how the SDO pin is tied. The same part also speaks SPI, which is worth knowing when the I²C bus is already busy.

BMP280 is not BME280

They look identical and cost nearly the same. The BMP280 has no humidity sensor. Check the marking, not the listing.

Wiring

In a project

To be written.

Traps

Trap What to do
Self-heating The part warms itself, and reads high by a degree or so if it is polled hard or sits next to something warm. Poll slowly, and keep it away from the supply.
Measuring the box, not the room In a sealed enclosure it reports the enclosure. If the number is meant to be the room, the sensor belongs outside the box.

Datasheet

Bosch Sensortec — BME280