[joshvm]

An alternative is the 8x8 Grid-EYE from Panasonic, costs around £30. The Melexis equivalent is a 16x4 which costs about the same. Note you'll need to fill in a fairly lengthy export/release form to get hold of the Grid-EYE sensors. I haven't had any problems ordering them from Farnell, just tell them what your project is.

Both are fairly easy to talk to over I2C. You can make a passable wireless (low-res) thermal camera using something like a Particle Photon.

The MLX90640 isn't out until September unfortunately.

NB: Actually Farnell have the Grid-EYE for only £16, but the full range ( -20 to 100) model is backordered. You can still get the 0 to 80 version easily.

[eb0la]

I really like Melexis uses SO-19 packaging instead of the Panasonic Grid-eye SMD.

Here are the octopart links for both:

AMG8851 ( https://octopart.com/amg8851-panasonic-23284568 )

MLX90621 ( https://octopart.com/mlx90621esf-bad-000-sp-melexis-52364204 )

[annnnd]

Or Flir Lepton. A bit more pricey (~$200), but image quality (wrt. noise) and resolution (80x60) are much higher.

[tossandturn]

I used the Melexis MLX90260/MLX90261 back in December 2014 for some sensors research at work, and they were not very helpful and the documentation was appallingly ambiguous for important parts of the programming; plus, it offloads all the mathematics (not insignificant amounts of floating point and statistics) to your processor (not a good deal for embedded work). The output, once processed, though, was very accurate and provided for additional processing to make more use of the information than similar offerings.

The Panasonic Grid-Eye offering was much easier to use, and did not require additional processing power just to make use of the information.

[joshvm]

I've used their single point IR sensor before, just had a look at the documentation for the 16x4 - holy hell that's a lot of steps just to get a calibrated sensor reading! Do they provide a C library for it, or are you expected to write and test your own?

[SauliusLukse]

MLX90640 would be nice, but only for speed improvements. I would like to add additional lenses to improve resolution, but they are not cheap.