signalk-raspberry-pi-bme280

BME-280/BMP-280 temperature, pressure and humidity (BME only) sensor information for SignalK. This plugin can be downloaded via the SignalK application.

Getting Started

You will need a raspberry pi with SignalK installed along with a BME280 or BMP280 sensor.

The BME280 sensor

Personally I am using the sensor found at the following link on Amazon. However there are many manufacturers to pick from. I liked the form factor and cable harness of this one.

Waveshare BME280 Environmental Sensor Sensing Environmental Temperature Humidity and barometric Pressure for Raspberry Pi Arduino STM32 I2C and SPI Interfaces by waveshare Learn more: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07GZCZFVG/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_goxICbDQBFVHW

Connecting the Sensor

All you need are pins 1 (3.3V Power), 3 (I2C1 SDA), 5 (I2C1 SCL) and 9 (GND). You need to connect these pins to VIN, SDA, SCL and GND pins of the BME module respectively. You need to make sure Raspberry Pi is turned off while doing this!

In order to use the sensor, the i2c bus must be enabled on your rasbperry pi. This can be accomplished using sudo raspi-config.

Troubleshooting

When you first start SK, you should see one of two things in the /var/log/syslog; BME280 initialization succeeded or BME280 initialization failed along with details of the failure.

If the sensor isn't found you can run ls /dev/*i2c* which should return /dev/i2c-1. If it doesnt return then make sure that the i2c bus is enabled using raspi-config.

You can also download the i2c-tools by running sudo apt-get install -y i2c-tools. Once those are installed you can run i2cdetect -y 1. You should see the BME280 detected as address 0x76 or 0x77. Here it is detected at 0x77.

If the sensor isn't detcted then go back and check the sensor wiring.

Authors

• Jeremy Carter - Author of this plugin