Adafruit AMG8833 IR Thermal Camera Breakout

by Adafruit

Add heat-vision to your project and with an Adafruit AMG8833 Grid-EYE Breakout!

This sensor from Panasonic is an 8x8 array of IR thermal sensors. When connected to your microcontroller (or Raspberry Pi) it will return an array of 64 individual infrared temperature readings over I2C. It's like those fancy thermal cameras, but compact and simple enough for easy integration.

This part will measure temperatures ranging from 0°C to 80°C (32°F to 176°F) with an accuracy of +- 2.5°C (4.5°F). It can detect a human from a distance of up to 7 meters (23) feet. With a maximum frame rate of 10Hz, It's perfect for creating your own human detector or mini thermal camera. Adafruit have code for using this breakout on an Arduino or compatible (the sensor communicates over I2C) or on a Raspberry Pi with Python. On the Pi, with a bit of image processing help from the SciPy python library Adafruit were able to interpolate the 8x8 grid and get some pretty nice results!

The AMG8833 is the next generation of 8x8 thermal IR sensors from Panasonic, and offers higher performance than it's predecessor the AMG8831. The sensor only supports I2C, and has a configurable interrupt pin that can fire when any individual pixel goes above or below a threshold that you set.

To make it easy to use, Adafruit pick & placed it on a breakout board with a 3.3V regulator and level shifting. So you can use it with any 3V or 5V microcontroller or computer.

Should you wish to avoid soldering, it now also includes Stemma QT connectors (SparkFun Qwiic compatible). Using these handy connectors you can simply plug in the sensor, no soldering required! QT Cable is not included, but we have a variety in the shop.

Even better - Adafruit have done all the hard work here, with example code and supporting software libraries to get you up in running in just a few lines of Arduino, Python or CircuitPython code! Check out the guide for how to get started.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Check our this detailed guide for wiring diagrams, datasheets, schematics, libraries, code, Fritzing objects, etc!

Revision History:

  • As of March 3, 2021, Adafruit have updated this sensor to be STEMMA QT compatible - that means there's now an easy way to plug-and-play this sensor without any soldering! The physical shape has not changed, but the pinout has changed from the non-QT earlier version to our standard pin ordering. So double-check your SDA/SCL pins are not swapped!

Product Dimensions: 25.6mm x 25.3mm x 6.0mm / 1.0" x 1.0" x 0.2"

Product Weight: 3.2g / 0.1oz