A sophisticated, hackable, 32x24 pixel thermal camera breakout! Use it to monitor the temperature of your CPU or coffee pot, or to build your own heat-seeking night vision camera. Works with Raspberry Pi or Arduino.
It's perfect for building into projects - industrial, scientific, or just fun - and much more affordable than most thermal cameras. Our breakout makes it easy to use the camera with your Raspberry Pi or Arduino, using I2C and 3-6V supply. And it's available in two different fields of view, 55° (standard) or 110° (wide angle) depending on your preference.
The MLX90640 far-infrared camera is an array of 768 (32x24) thermal sensors that can detect temperatures from -40 to 300°C with approximately 1°C accuracy and up to 64FPS! The applications of this camera are manifold: measure the heat or heat dissipation of devices like CPUs, circuit boards, or electrical appliances; use it to identify thermal inefficiencies in your home; or use it for presence detection to identify bodies in complete darkness.
This breakout is compatible with our Breakout Garden system, where using breakouts is as easy just popping it into one of the slots and starting to grow your project, create, and code. It's also Qw/ST compatible, which means it can be plugged into microcontroller or HATs with a Qwiic or STEMMA QT connector using a handy cable.
Features
- Melexis MLX90640 far-infrared sensor array (datasheet)
- 32x24 pixels
- Field of view: 55°x35° or 110°x75°
- Up to 64FPS
- -40 to 300°C detection with approximately 1°C accuracy
- I2C interface (address 0x33)
- 3.3V or 5V compatible
- Reverse polarity protection (on Breakout Garden connector)
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi computers
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico and pin compatible boards (C/C++ only)
- Compatible with certain Arduino models
- Mechanical Drawing
Kit includes
- MLX90640 breakout
- 1x5 pin header
- 1x5 right-angle socket header
We've designed this breakout board so that you can solder on the piece of right-angle socket header and pop it straight onto the bottom left 5 pins on your Raspberry Pi's GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9).
Software
Note that our Breakout Garden installer will not automatically detect and install the thermal camera software, you'll have to install it manually. Full instructions can be found here.
We've written software in C (with a Python wrapper) that you can use to generate images and video from the MLX90640 cameras.
A C++ example for use with Raspberry Pi Pico (and compatibles) can be found here.
SparkFun provide an example Arduino/Processing sketch for the MLX90640.
Notes
- Dimensions: 19x19x2.75mm (LxWxH).
- Melexis state that up to 4 of the 768 IR sensor pixels in each array can be dead, with the unit still remaining in spec. Our software will automatically detect and correct for dead pixels by interpolating readings from adjacent sensors - if you are using alternative software we recommend that you configure it to take a similar approach.