Aren't thermal imaging cameras amazing? They can reveal the heat in circuits, engines, plumbing, home insulation, firefighting, medicine, forensics, environmental science, search and rescue, energy monitoring, chemical reactions, detecting wildlife, detecting trespassers. What could you do with one? Find the cold spots in your house? Fine-tune the cooling system in your overclocked game machine? Investigate whether Rover was sitting in your recliner? Too bad the price puts these cameras out of reach... or it used to, until now.

The Adafruit MLX90640 IR Thermal Camera Breakout makes low resolution thermal imaging affordable. It can detect a 32 by 24 pixel grid of temperatures within a 55 degree field of view, or a 110 degree field of view.  With a few extra goodies from Adafruit, you can turn it into your own mini thermal recording camera.

Your Feather-based thermal camera will be able to capture and store the images it senses as modified BMP files on flash media. These can be downloaded to a full-sized computer where the temperature data can be visualized and set in motion using open source tools written in the Processing language.

And don't miss the 3D printing guide, PyBadge Thermal Camera Case, for a project that will enhance your camera's protection, ergonomics, and style.

Parts

The project is based on the MLX90640 from Melexis, a low cost sensor that uses thermopile technology.

You'll need a board with Adafruit Arcada support + a TFT LCD screen and STEMMA connectors.