SGP30 Breakout Board

Adafruit's SGP30 multi-pixel gas sensor breakout board offers a fully integrated MOX gas sensor, which is a very fine air quality sensor from Sensirion with I²C interfacing and fully calibrated output signals with typical accuracy of 15% within measured values. The SGP combines multiple metal-oxide sensing elements on one chip to provide more detailed air quality signals. The sensor can detect a wide range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and H2 and is intended for indoor air quality monitoring. When connected to a microcontroller (running Adafruit_SGP30 library code) it will return a total volatile organic compound (TVOC) reading and an equivalent carbon dioxide reading (CO₂e) over I²C.

The SGP30 has a standard hot-plate MOX sensor, as well as a small microcontroller that controls power to the plate, reads the analog voltage, tracks the baseline calibration, calculates TVOC and CO₂e values, and provides an I²C interface to read from. Unlike the CCS811, this sensor does not require I²C clock stretching.

This sensor, like all VOC/gas sensors, has variability and to get precise measurements users will want to calibrate it against known sources. For general environmental sensors, it gives the user a good idea of trends and comparison. The SGP30 does have built-in calibration capabilities though CO₂e is calculated based on H2 concentration; it is not an accurate CO₂ sensor for laboratory use.