BME280 Temperature Humidity Barometric Pressure Sensor

The BME280 is the gold standard environmental sensor for IoT weather stations and indoor air quality monitoring. Combining temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure in a single tiny package, it eliminates the need for three separate sensors.

Accuracy is excellent for the price point. Temperature reads within 1 degree Celsius, humidity within 3% RH, and pressure within 1 hPa. The pressure sensor doubles as an altimeter with roughly 1-meter resolution — useful for drone altitude hold and floor-level detection in buildings.

The I2C interface makes integration effortless. The Adafruit BME280 library provides calibrated readings in human-readable units with just a few lines of code. SPI is also available for higher-speed applications.

Power consumption is impressively low at 3.6 microamps in forced mode at 1Hz sampling. This makes it ideal for battery-powered outdoor weather stations that need to run for months on a single charge.

Watch out for self-heating effects — the sensor's own power dissipation can raise temperature readings by 1-2 degrees if sampled continuously. Use forced mode with sleep intervals for accurate temperature data.