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.

It's also compatible with our fancy new Breakout Garden, where using breakouts is as easy just popping it into one of the six slots and starting to grow your project, create, and code.

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
  • Compatible with Raspberry Pi computers, and with certain Arduino models
  • Mechanical Drawing

Kit includes

  • MLX90640 breakout
  • 1x5 male header
  • 1x5 female right-angle header

We've designed this breakout board so that you can solder on the piece of right-angle female 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 that you can use to generate images and video from the MLX90640 cameras.

SparkFun also 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
2 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
2 years ago
Just PERFECT! A great breakout and a way to build a REALLY CHEAP thermal camera and very similar to a commercial one. In combination with BreakOut Garden Mini, no need to solder anything and you can get a thermal image in less than 5 minutes!
by Andres about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Well, it simply works ! Setup was easy, thanks also to the many wonderful projects like https://tomshaffner.github.io/PiThermalCam/.
by Angelo about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Arrived in good time and well packaged. Opted for 55 viewing angle and I have soldered the right angled header as supplied to the board as it is directly connected to RPi4 gpio pins for initial setup and testing. It took a bit of reading of Toms Thermal Cam build before getting somewhere near working and learning what I had to fine tune in the python code. It works and results are excellent in my humble opinion. Applications for this are aplenty. The TTC build provides a variety of video outputs and I have a lot more experimenting to do with this now it is reliably outputting data. Video runs at about 1.3fps at 400k baud rate. In a room at ambient temperature 21degC it is picking me up at a distance away of circa 1.5m. Will be testing its limitations , however, I am initially very impressed with this unit.
by Mr. about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Like everything for the breakout garden, simply to plugin and install a python library and ready to go. I use this with Apache Pulsar
by TIMOTHY about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Camera came with a dead pixel. This is within accepted tolerance. I overcame the problem by replacing the reading with the average from the pixel either side.
by Anonymous about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
I've only started playing with this but so far its been fun. Soldered the header on and then off to write some code. I've only been using the test programs on a Raspberry pi 4 so far and managed to get video of a circuit board that i thought was getting too hot and basic thermal issues around the house. it works well and i was pleasantly. Because of xmas delivery was slow and i onlygot it 2 days ago, so review is based on my limited time with it
by William about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Nice quality board. Good results, and super accurate. Found the GitHub Python examples impossible to use, probably because I’m using a laptop!
by Andy about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
3 years ago
Nice quality board. Good results, and super accurate. Found the GitHub Python examples impossible to use, probably because I’m using a laptop!
by Andy about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Excellent "value for money" Thermal camera. Hooked it up with an M5 stack. Connecting it was a brease with the supplied header. It surprised me of the accurcy. (according the datasheet of the sensor +/- 1°C). Body temperature was spot on.
by E. about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Nice breakout, and I appreciate that it comes with female headers and appropriate pin spacing for raspberry pi, but also with regular male headers for breadboarding. Would love to see Pimoroni join in with SparkFun and Adafruit by adding the "QWIIC/STEMMA QT" i2c connector to breakouts like this.
by Tom about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
5 years ago
This is the most wanted product all over the world now. The most affordable 32x24 pixel thermal camera module. Although it is not recommended as a medical sensor, it will be adequate to be used as the non-contact temperature detector and also a heat leakage detector. This Pimoroni product stands among the crowds with its interesting price, size, and the use of the socket. It's superb!
by Karyono about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io
5 years ago
Excellent little camera. Easy to setup, especially using a Breakout Garden Hat. Lots of software on the Internet, to use. Really good buy.
by Alan about MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout via REVIEWS.io

4 user photos