MLX90640 Thermal Camera Breakout

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. The breakout board is easy to use with Raspberry Pi or Arduino, supporting I2C and 3-6V supply. Available in two fields of view: 55° (standard) or 110° (wide angle).

The MLX90640 far-infrared camera contains 768 (32x24) thermal sensors with temperature detection from -40 to 300°C with approximately 1°C accuracy and up to 64FPS. Applications include measuring heat dissipation, identifying thermal inefficiencies, and presence detection in darkness.

This breakout is compatible with Pimoroni's Breakout Garden system and is Qw/ST compatible, allowing easy connection with microcontrollers or HATs using Qwiic or STEMMA QT connectors.

Features

• Melexis MLX90640 far-infrared sensor array
• Resolution: 32x24 pixels
• Field of view options: 55°x35° or 110°x75°
• Up to 64 frames per second
• Temperature detection range: -40 to 300°C with ~1°C accuracy
• I2C interface (address 0x33)
• 3.3V or 5V compatible
• Reverse polarity protection on Breakout Garden connector
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi Pico (C/C++), certain Arduino models

Kit Includes

• MLX90640 breakout board
• 1x5 pin header
• 1x5 right-angle socket header

The right-angle socket can be soldered and plugged into the bottom left 5 pins of Raspberry Pi's GPIO header (pins 1, 3, 5, 7, 9).

Software

Breakout Garden installer will not automatically detect or install thermal camera software. Manual installation required. Full installation instructions and C code with Python wrapper are available on Pimoroni's GitHub.

Dimensions

19x19x2.75mm (LxWxH)

Notes

Up to 4 dead pixels per sensor array may occur; Pimoroni's software automatically detects and corrects these via interpolation.