BME688 Gas Scan Returns Zero

Hello,

I have the BME688 and BSEC running on a custom design based on a Cortex M0+ processor. I am communicating with the sensor fine, and can read temperature, humidity, etc and configure the sensor and BSEC using the bsec_integration.c library found in the examples section.

I am doing an initial test on the gas scan function using the 'coffee or not' config array exported from one of the four models. Upon defining the helper functions (sleep, set_config, etc), running the sensor, and viewing outputs, I am confused by the results.

What I see from a full gas scan result in ambient air is below:

gas estimate 1

gas accuracy 1

gas estimate 2

gas accuracy 2

gas estimate 3

gas accuracy 3

gas estimate 4

gas accuracy 4

raw gas

raw gas index

gas percentage

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

91135.6328

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

49545.1914

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

86166.2734

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

53522.8945

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

119486.5781

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

153018.5312

5

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

201099.7656

6

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

324358.5625

7

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

913673.875

8

0

0.9994

3

0.0006

3

0

3

0

3

195345.2812

9

0

This repeats for as long as I run the program. Introducing coffee beans to view any updates does not change any parameter. This gives me some questions:

  1. It is scanning the heater profile from 1-10, but I would expect ambient air to show gas estimate 1 and its accuracy at 0.999, 3 for the whole profile. Is this a wrong assumption?

  2. What could it mean if the sensor is not sensing coffee? Do I need to let the sensor run for 24 hours, or the four day calibration period, before any sensing will occur?

    Also, unrelated:

Does any BME688 sensor require any kind of calibration period before it is useful, even if we are not using the adjusted IAQ feature?

Thanks!

1 reply