Pocket-Sized Thermal Imager using a $70 MLX90640 sensor

thermal camera

Just as the gold standard for multimeters and other instrumentation likely comes in a yellow package of some sort, there is a similar household name for thermal imaging. But, if they’re known for anything other than the highest quality thermal cameras, it’s the excessively high price. There are other options around, but if you want to make sure that the finished product has some sort of quality control, you might want to consider building your own thermal imaging device like Ruslan has done.

The pocket-sized thermal camera is built around a MLX90640 sensor from Melexis which can be obtained on its own, but can also be paired with an STM32F446 board with a USB connection in order to easily connect it to a computer.

It’s probably worth reading the comments at the linked article though to also realise this is not going to be the high resolution accuracy of the excessively expensive thermal imager. So you get what you pay for, but many this may well do the trick.

See https://hackaday.com/2023/03/14/pocket-sized-thermal-imager/