CCS811 Air Quality Breakout Hookup Guide

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Contributors: MTaylor
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Hardware Overview

The CCS811 is supported by only a few passives, and so the breakout board is relatively simple. This section discusses the various pins on the board.

Control signals are at the top left of the front of the board, I2C interface, controls, and ground are the bottom four pins on the left side of the board, NTC is the two through pins at the bottom of the board

Connections available to the user are shown on the top side

Jumpers are on the back of the board, the jumper towards the top is the Address Jumper, the lower one is the I2C Jumper

Jumpers are available on the bottom

Pins

PinDescriptionDirection
RSTReset (active low)In
INTInterrupt (active low)Out
WAKWake (active low)In
SCLClockIn
SDADataIn
3.3VPowerIn
GNDGroundIn
NTC (2 pins)Negative thermal coefficient resistorN/A
Note: Temperature compensation from an attached NTC Thermistor is no longer supported on the CCS811. In order to add environmental compensation to the CCS811 an external environmental sensor like the SparkFun Atmospheric Sensor Breakout -BME280. If you are looking for a board that has this envirnomental compensation built in, check out the SparkFun Environmental Combo Breakout - CCS811/BME280 (Qwiic).

Power and I2C Bus

The minimum required connections are power, ground SDA and SCL. Supply a regulated 3.3V between the board's 3.3V pin and ground terminals. The sensor consumes an average of 12mA of current.

The I2C bus has pull-up resistors enabled by default. If not desired, these can be removed by separating the "I2C PU" triple jumper on the bottom side with a hobby knife.

An I2C address can be either 0x5A or 0x5B. The "ADDR" jumper is connected with copper from the factory, corresponding to a default address of 0x5B. Close this jumper to use the address 0x5A.

Settling time: This sensor takes about 20 minutes to get fully settled to a point where it generates good data. The I2C bus is active, and data can be collected before the 20 minutes is up, but it may not be accurate.

Control lines

Additionally, the three control lines RST, INT and WAK can be used to further the degree of control.

  • RST --- Pull this line low to reset the IC.
  • INT --- After configuring the sensor to emit interrupt requests, read this line to determine the state of the interrupt.
  • WAK --- Pull this line high to put the sensor to sleep. This can be used to save power but is not necessary if power is not an issue.

NTC Thermistor operation

Unsupported feature: Temperature compensation from an attached NTC thermistor is no longer supported on the CCS811. This section is for reference only as this functionality only works on boards with a previous release of the CCS811. Boards purchased after 2017 do not have this feature.

A thermistor can be used to determine the temperature of the CCS811's surroundings, which can be used to help compensate the readings. You'll need your own 10K NTC thermistor, such as our 10K Thermistor, soldered between the "NTC" pins. A thermistor is a nonpolarized device, so it can go in either way.