The long awaited BME680 from Bosch gives you all the environmental sensing you want in one small package. This little sensor contains temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and VOC gas sensing capabilities. All over SPI or I2C, at a great price!

Like the BME280 & BMP280, this precision sensor from Bosch can measure humidity with ±3% accuracy, barometric pressure with ±1 hPa absolute accuracy, and temperature with ±1.0°C accuracy. Because pressure changes with altitude, and the pressure measurements are so good, you can also use it as an altimeter with  ±1 meter or better accuracy!

The BME680 takes those sensors to the next step in that it contains a small MOX sensor. The heated metal oxide changes resistance based on the volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the air, so it can be used to detect gasses & alcohols such as Ethanol, Alcohol and Carbon Monoxide and perform air quality measurements. Note it will give you one resistance value, with overall VOC content, it cannot differentiate gasses or alcohols.

To make things easier and a bit more flexible, we've also included SparkFun Qwiic compatible STEMMA QT connectors for the I2C bus so you don't even need to solder! Just plug in a compatible cable and attach it to your MCU of choice, and you’re ready to load up some software and measure some light.

Please note, this sensor, like all VOC/gas sensors, has variability and to get precise measurements you will want to calibrate it against known sources! That said, for general environmental sensors, it will give you a good idea of trends and comparisons. We recommend that you run this sensor for 48 hours when you first receive it to "burn it in", and then 30 minutes in the desired mode every time the sensor is in use. This is because the sensitivity levels of the sensor will change during early use and the resistance will slowly rise over time as the MOX warms up to its baseline reading.

There are two versions of this board - the STEMMA QT version shown above, and the original header-only version shown below. Code works the same on both!

For your convenience we've pick-and-placed the sensor on a PCB with a 3.3V regulator and some level shifting so it can be easily used with your favorite 3.3V or 5V microcontroller.

This guide was first published on Nov 08, 2017. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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