Adafruit BME280 Humidity + Barometric Pressure + Temperature

Sensor Breakout
Created by lady ada

Last updated on 2017-01-11 09:01:04 PM UTC

 Guide Contents

Guide Contents 2
Overview 3
Pinouts 6
Power Pins: 6
SPI Logic pins: 7
I2C Logic pins: 7
Assembly 8
Prepare the header strip: 8
Add the breakout board: 9
And Solder! 10
Wiring & Test 12
I2C Wiring 12
SPI Wiring 13
Download Adafruit_BME280 library 14
Load Demo 15
Library Reference 16
F.A.Q. 19
Downloads 20
Documents 20
Alternative Driver (Python) 20
Schematic 20
Dimensions 21

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Overview

Bosch has stepped up their game with their new BME280 sensor, an environmental sensor
with temperature, barometric pressure and humidity! This sensor is great for all sorts of
weather/environmental sensing and can even be used in both I2C and SPI!

This precision sensor from Bosch is the best low-cost sensing solution for measuring
humidity with ±3% accuracy, barometric pressure with ±1 hPa absolute accuraccy, 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
accuracy!

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The BME280 is the next-generation of sensors from Bosch, and is the upgrade to the
BMP085/BMP180/BMP183 - with a low altitude noise of 0.25m and the same fast
conversion time. It has the same specifications, but can use either I2C or SPI. For simple
easy wiring, go with I2C. If you want to connect a bunch of sensors without worrying about
I2C address collisions, go with SPI.

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Nice sensor right? So we made it easy for you to get right into your next project. The
surface-mount sensor is soldered onto a PCB and comes with a 3.3V regulator and level
shifting so you can use it with a 3V or 5V logic microcontroller without worry. We even wrote
up a nice tutorial with wiring diagrams, schematics, libraries and examples to get you
running in 10 minutes!

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Pinouts

Power Pins:
Vin - this is the power pin. Since the sensor chip uses 3 VDC, we have included a
voltage regulator on board that will take 3-5VDC and safely convert it down. To power
the board, give it the same power as the logic level of your microcontroller - e.g. for a

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 5V micro like Arduino, use 5V
3Vo - this is the 3.3V output from the voltage regulator, you can grab up to 100mA
from this if you like
GND - common ground for power and logic

SPI Logic pins:

All pins going into the breakout have level shifting circuitry to make them 3-5V logic level
safe. Use whatever logic level is on Vin!

SCK - This is the SPI Clock pin, its an input to the chip
SDO - this is the Serial Data Out / Master In Slave Out pin, for data sent from the
BMP183 to your processor
SDI - this is the Serial Data In / Master Out Slave In pin, for data sent from your
processor to the BME280
CS - this is the Chip Select pin, drop it low to start an SPI transaction. Its an input to
the chip

If you want to connect multiple BME280's to one microcontroller, have them share the SDI,
SDO and SCK pins. Then assign each one a unique CS pin.

I2C Logic pins:

SCK - this is also the I2C clock pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C clock line.
SDI - this is also the I2C data pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C data line.

Leave the other pins disconnected

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Assembly

Prepare the header

strip:

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 Cut the strip to length if
necessary. It will be easier to
solder if you insert it into a
breadboard - long pins down

Add the breakout

board:
Place the breakout board over
the pins so that the short pins
poke through the breakout pads

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 And Solder!
Be sure to solder all pins for
reliable electrical contact.

(For tips on soldering, be sure to

check out our Guide to Excellent
Soldering (http://adafru.it/aTk)).

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 You're done! Check your solder
joints visually and continue onto
the next steps

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Wiring & Test
You can easily wire this breakout to any microcontroller, we'll be using an Arduino. For
another kind of microcontroller, as long as you have 4 available pins it is possible to 'bit-
bang SPI' or you can use two I2C pins, but usually those pins are fixed in hardware. Just
check out the library, then port the code.

I2C Wiring
Use this wiring if you want to connect via I2C interface

Connect Vin to the power supply, 3-5V is fine. Use the same voltage that the
microcontroller logic is based off of. For most Arduinos, that is 5V
Connect GND to common power/data ground
Connect the SCL pin to the I2C clock SCL pin on your Arduino. On an UNO & '328
based Arduino, this is also known as A5, on a Mega it is also known as digital 21 and
on a Leonardo/Micro, digital 3
Connect the SDA pin to the I2C data SDA pin on your Arduino. On an UNO & '328
based Arduino, this is also known as A4, on a Mega it is also known as digital 20 and
on a Leonardo/Micro, digital 2

By default, the i2c address is 0x77. If you add a jumper from SDO to GND, the address will
change to 0x76.

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SPI Wiring
Since this is a SPI-capable sensor, we can use hardware or 'software' SPI. To make wiring
identical on all Arduinos, we'll begin with 'software' SPI. The following pins should be used:

Connect Vin to the power supply, 3V or 5V is fine. Use the same voltage that the
microcontroller logic is based off of. For most Arduinos, that is 5V
Connect GND to common power/data ground
Connect the SCK pin to Digital #13 but any pin can be used later
Connect the SDO pin to Digital #12 but any pin can be used later
Connect the SDI pin to Digital #11 but any pin can be used later
Connect the CS pin Digital #10 but any pin can be used later

Later on, once we get it working, we can adjust the library to use hardware SPI if you
desire, or change the pins to other

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Download Adafruit_BME280 library
To begin reading sensor data, you will need to download Adafruit_BME280 from our github
repository (http://adafru.it/fFZ). You can do that by visiting the github repo and manually
downloading or, easier, just click this button to download the zip

Download Adafruit BME280 Library

http://adafru.it/fFZ

Rename the uncompressed folder Adafruit_BME280 and check that the Adafruit_BME280
folder contains Adafruit_BME280.cpp and Adafruit_BME280.h

Place the Adafruit_BME280 library folder your arduinosketchfolder/libraries/ folder.

You may need to create the libraries subfolder if its your first library. Restart the IDE.

We also have a great tutorial on Arduino library installation at:

http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-all-about-arduino-libraries-install-use (http://adafru.it/aYM)

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Load Demo
Open up File->Examples->Adafruit_BME280->bmp280test and upload to your Arduino
wired up to the sensor

Depending on whether you are using I2C or SPI, change the pin names and comment or
uncomment the following lines.

#define BME_SCK 13
#define BME_MISO 12
#define BME_MOSI 11
#define BME_CS 10

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Adafruit_BME280 bme; // I2C
//Adafruit_BME280 bme(BME_CS); // hardware SPI
//Adafruit_BME280 bme(BME_CS, BME_MOSI, BME_MISO, BME_SCK);

Once uploaded to your Arduino, open up the serial console at 9600 baud speed to see data
being printed out

Temperature is calculated in degrees C, you can convert this to F by using the classic F =
C * 9/5 + 32 equation.

Pressure is returned in the SI units of Pascals. 100 Pascals = 1 hPa = 1 millibar. Often
times barometric pressure is reported in millibar or inches-mercury. For future reference 1
pascal =0.000295333727 inches of mercury, or 1 inch Hg = 3386.39 Pascal. So if you take
the pascal value of say 100734 and divide by 3386.39 you'll get 29.72 inches-Hg.

You can also calculate Altitude. However, you can only really do a good accurate job of
calculating altitude if you know the hPa pressure at sea level for your location and
day! The sensor is quite precise but if you do not have the data updated for the current day
then it can be difficult to get more accurate than 10 meters.

Library Reference

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You can start out by creating a BME280 object with either software SPI (where all four pins
can be any I/O) using

Adafruit_BME280 bme(BME_CS, BME_MOSI, BME_MISO, BME_SCK);

Or you can use hardware SPI. With hardware SPI you must use the hardware SPI pins for
your Arduino - and each arduino type has different pins! Check the SPI reference to see
what pins to use. (http://adafru.it/d5h)
In this case, you can use any CS pin, but the other three pins are fixed

Adafruit_BME280 bme(BME_CS); // hardware SPI

or I2C using the default I2C bus, no pins are assigned

Adafruit_BME280 bme; // I2C

Once started, you can initialize the sensor with

if (!bme.begin()) {
Serial.println("Could not find a valid BME280 sensor, check wiring!");
while (1);
}

begin() will return True if the sensor was found, and False if not. If you get a False value
back, check your wiring!

Reading humidity, temperature and pressure is easy, just call:

bme.readTemperature()
bme.readPressure()
bme.readHumidity()

Temperature is always a floating point, in Centigrade. Pressure is a 32 bit integer with the
pressure in Pascals. You may need to convert to a different value to match it with your
weather report. Humidity is in % Relative Humidity

It's also possible to turn the BME280 into an altimeter. If you know the pressure at sea
level, the library can calculate the current barometric pressure into altitude

bmp.readAltitude(seaLevelPressure)

However, you can only really do a good accurate job of calculating altitude if you
know the hPa pressure at sea level for your location and day! The sensor is quite
precise but if you do not have the data updated for the current day then it can be difficult to
get more accurate than 10 meters.

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Pass in the current sea level pressure in hPa - so the value will be somewhere around
~1000. You can also test with the generic 1013.25 value.

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F.A.Q.
How come the altitude calculation is wrong? Is my sensor broken?

No, your sensor is likely just fine. The altitude calculation depends on knowing the
barometric pressure at sea level

If you do not set the correct sea level pressure for your location FOR THE CURRENT
DAY it will not be able to calculate the altitude accurately

Barometric pressure at sea level changes daily based on the weather!

If I have long delays between reads, the first data read seems wrong?

The BMx280 'saves' the last reading in memory for you to query. Just read twice in a row
and toss out the first reading!

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Downloads
Documents
Datasheet for the BME280 sensor used in this breakout (http://adafru.it/fG0)
Arduino BME280 Driver (http://adafru.it/fFZ)
Fritzing object in the Adafruit Fritzing Library (http://adafru.it/aP3)
EagleCAD PCB files on GitHub (http://adafru.it/rCW)

Alternative Driver (Python)

If you are using this breakout with a Raspberry Pi or Pi2, you can also look at the
Adafruit_Python_BME280 (http://adafru.it/fX4) driver.

This alternative driver uses I2C to communicate with the BME280, so connect SCL on the
Pi to SCK on the BME, and SDA to SDI, along with power (3.3V to VIN) and GND.

Schematic
Click to enlarge

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Dimensions
In inches

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