Using BME280 and BMP280 Breakouts with Adafruit Sensor Libraries

This video summarizes how to integrate non-Adafruit BME280 and BMP280 sensors in your circuit using Adafruit’s sensor library for Arduino in a way that won’t realize the error messages common to these setups (e.g. “Could not find a valid sensor - check wiring, address, sensor id”).
I’ll post the code referenced in this video shortly once I add appropriate attributes recognizing Adafruit for the original code from which my own was derived. Stay tuned.

[@edravo]

Essential viewing for anyone working with sensors. You will encounter at least one of these problems sometime and be driven to madness if not familiar with identifying and making needed changes.

[@ModestMaker]

Hoping it saves someone a little frustration- no need for all of us to work this out the hard way.

[@WizardTim]

The thing I really wish I knew when I first started using those sensors is that the ones you often find on eBay can be 'fake'. I bought a few BME sensors only to find they're BMP sensors! Now I only buy ones from reputable stores, I find the Sparkfun ones have the best breakout PCB for my use cases.
Also the reason why you can't cut the address select trace on some generic breakout PCBs is because there isn't one, those ICs actually have an internal pull-up resistor to select the default address when left unconnected, you can just add the bridge without cutting anything on them. Edit: You need to add the solder jumper where then trace should be (jump to ground), as it's pulled high by default with the internal pull-up resistor.

[@ModestMaker]

Yes - it's a little like going to Vegas when you buy on eBay. I've found a couple of reputable dealers, but they are a bit more expensive than the rest. Thanks for the heads up on on the trace for those PCBs-- I'll add something to the description shortly. (I always learn something new from posted comments.) 😊

[@Aragorn450]

Yeah, now that you've dealt with it you won't forget that lesson about addresses but it's something to always deal with for I²C. Each device has its own device address and no two can have the same address. As you saw, most have a way of changing the address for those times where there is a conflict or you want multiple of the same device. The more expensive ones have a jumper that you can use to change it, but doing it with bridging/cutting traces is easy enough once you're used to it.
It's just a matter of having the correct board specs to know which way the pins should be for each address and in cases like this where multiple companies are making the "same" chip, as you saw, it's important to know which board you're dealing with!

[@ModestMaker]

Exactly. Well, now I know- small steps. For this issue to have merited it’s own chapter in my soil monitoring journey shows how much time it took me to figure out. It wasn’t much fun trying to debug this outside in 110 degrees F when that second sensor didn’t work 🙄.

[@Aragorn450]

@@ModestMaker Ooph, yeah, certainly not good conditions to be troubleshooting! When you mentioned in the last video about having issues with two of them, I knew it had to be the address causing issues. And the error does mention that as a possible culprit.... along with a few other possibilities. But that's because I'm familiar with I²C and clearly you weren't. But now you are AND are hopefully helping others not make the same mistake to boot! 👏

[@surajdudhe7183]

Thank you so much

[@ModestMaker]

You're most welcome.