The Sensiron STS35 temperature sensor is a factory calibrated digital temperature sensor, with accuracy of ±0.1°C. As with any sensor, having a breakout board is important, but this ClosedCube STS35 breakout board ticks all the right boxes for me.
The designer of a breakout board needs to understand the potential applications, and the most important things a developer might want to change. For a temperature sensor, it’s important to have the sensor physically isolated from the rest of the circuitry to ensure the measured temperature is correct. This is taken care of by putting the sensor on its own little island of PCB, with a thin section of PCB connecting it to the breakout pins. This helps isolate it thermally.
Because this sensor uses I2C, another important thing developers might want to change is the I2C address. Including a DIP switch for address changing shows that the designer understands what people want to do with this sensor (using multiples on the same I2C bus). The DIP switch also allows you to enable and disable the I2C pull-up resistors in they case they’re already included in the microcontroller board you plan to attach to this.
I love seeing well-thought out boards like this. The differences might seem trivial, but when you are in the middle of a debug session, little touches like this can make the job so much easier. The small size is also important, allowing the developer to take advantage of the small size of the sensor itself. There’s nothing more annoying than a temperature sensor in the middle of a huge PCB!
The best part of all? The price includes two of these breakouts, meaning you can take advantage of the I2C address changes and daisy-chain them together. The sensor accepts voltages from 2.5-5.5V, which easily handles 2.5V, 3.3V and 5V logic. It also has a resolution of 0.01°C and has an ALERT output which can drive a microcontroller interrupt line in case the temperature goes outside of pre-defined ranges.
If you’re looking for a small, reliable and high-accuracy temperature sensor, the STS35 is a great choice, and this breakout board is an excellent way to develop with it!
