sensor-bme680 — WildlifeSystems

Overview

The Bosch BME680 is a multi-parameter environmental sensor that measures temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and gas resistance in a single package. For biodiversity monitoring, this combination provides a rich environmental profile — capturing the microclimate conditions that govern species distribution, pollinator activity, and phenological timing.

sensor-bme680 is a C implementation that reads BME680 sensors via I2C on the Raspberry Pi. It supports multiple sensors on the same bus and outputs JSON compatible with the WildlifeSystems sensor-control framework.

Measurements

Temperature — degrees Celsius
Humidity — relative humidity percentage
Pressure — barometric pressure in hPa (useful for detecting weather fronts that trigger animal movement)
Gas resistance — in Ohms (an indicator of volatile organic compounds and air quality)

Installation

Via the WildlifeSystems APT repository:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install sensor-bme680

Or build from source:

make
sudo make install

Usage

sensor-bme680                   # read all measurements
sensor-bme680 internal          # internal sensors only
sensor-bme680 external          # external sensors only
sensor-bme680 list              # list available measurement types

Configuration

Configure sensors in /etc/ws/sensors/bme680.json:

[
  {
    "address": "0x76",
    "internal": false
  }
]

address — I2C address (0x76 or 0x77)
internal — whether the sensor is inside the enclosure
sensor_id — optional custom identifier

Example Output

[
  {"sensor":"bme680_temperature","measures":"temperature","unit":"Celsius","value":23.5,"internal":false},
  {"sensor":"bme680_humidity","measures":"humidity","unit":"percentage","value":45.0,"internal":false},
  {"sensor":"bme680_pressure","measures":"pressure","unit":"hPa","value":1013.25,"internal":false},
  {"sensor":"bme680_gas","measures":"resistance","unit":"Ohms","value":50000.0,"internal":false}
]

Source Code

sensor-bme680 on GitHub →