MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout

by Pimoroni

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.

59 customer reviews

a year ago
Using ESP32 linked to a PC via a coms port and using the Processing freeware - and writing code to enhance the pixilation by factor of x10 - greyscale images Cap-0 and Cap-1 are produced. Opening in paint.net and applying a Gaussian filter yields Cap-0A and Cap-B. These are first steps - hoping to increase the "resolution" still further.
by Heather about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
I couldn't get any of the referenced code to work without framebuffer errors and segmentation faults. After a good 12 hours of trying on a pi3 and pi4 I came across this GitHub page. Installing everything as sudo for python3 worked a charm. Pity Pimoroni don't supply such good code. Here it is: https://github.com/EverythingSmartHome/mlx90640-thermal-camera
by Paul about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Excellent bit of kit for the price. Easy to hook up and identify either using the software instructions on the page, or via other routes like I did - no issues at all getting it to pick up. The two sets of headers included is appreciated and made hooking up even easier.
by Andrew about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Very speedy delivery - well done Pimoroni. The IR camera works well - I have used a Pi Zero to read I2C data from the camera and Display HAT Mini to render images. The project is a simple IR camera to help find thermal leaks from our house.
by William about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
2 years ago
Best thermal camera that I could find in this price range with 32 x 24 pixels (the next closest is 8 x 8 pixels). I used mine to make a ghost busters ecto goggle headset - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm6IWaHA0K4
by Billy about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Nice breakout but use with care! I wish the dead pixels were less prevalent, is this from the sensor itself or from the board implementation? We have between 2 and 3 dead pixels on the three boards we received.
by Gustavo about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io

4 user photos