Either as an educational project or simply to satisfy your curiosity and use it on certain occasions where it could not hurt, for only about 100 euros you can build your own thermal camera with a Raspberry Pi .
The price of a professional thermal camera
Thermal cameras are very specific products and for that very reason, in addition to the technology they integrate, their price is usually quite high. Although it is also true that over the years and the cheaper of many components have become more accessible.
However, a good thermal camera, capable of accurately showing each point of heat, can easily cost around 1,000 euros. And of course, paying that amount for a product that you rarely use later does not make much sense. So this is where the versatile Raspberry Pi and its vast accessory ecosystem come in.
Thanks to this board you can create a thermal camera with which you can experiment with different types of use that could go from measuring where the heat points are generated in a laptop to seeing if there is some kind of problem with the electrical installation of the house or creating a night surveillance system.
Of course, the best of all is not all the possible uses that you could give it, the most interesting thing about building your own thermal camera is that it would barely cost you about 100 euros. Do you want to know how to do it? Well, we are going to tell you.
How to create your own thermal camera
Let’s start with the basics, it is essential to carry out this project: the components. As you can imagine there are two basic elements, which are the Raspberry Pi and a thermal camera compatible with said board, and then a series of extra elements with which everything necessary is achieved for it to become a reality.
This is the list of hardware necessary to make your own thermal camera:
- Raspberry Pi 4
- Thermal Camera MLX90640
- Cables for connecting the camera to the board
- Power supply
With these components you could already assemble the project, although you can add some extra elements such as a heatsink that helps reduce the heat generated during long periods of use, housings, etc. You could even add a small external screen to connect to the Raspberry Pi and thus have the image always in view if you do not want to do it remotely or using a large monitor.
Once you have all the hardware material ready, the first step is to connect everything. Here you don’t have to worry about thinking that it can be extremely complicated, because it really isn’t. You could say that the only thing is to put four cables to the GPIO connector and that is something that everyone could do by following the following scheme shared by Tom Shaffner, responsible for this incredible project.
Once you have everything ready at the hardware level, the next step is to install the necessary software to make the project work. Here you will need to have certain knowledge when installing libraries and performing the odd step that involves using the Terminal. But don’t worry if you’ve never dealt with it either, because again you will have all the necessary instructions .
Basically the process consists of:
- Install the libraries
- Enable communication with the thermal camera module
- Verify the correct communication between the board and the camera
- Finish the setup to display the image on the screen
You have all these steps with their respective commands in detail on the project page created by Tom Shaffner . What’s more, you can also activate the option to access that image that the camera is capturing remotely. So you can see at all times what happens if, for example, you use this system as a security camera.
Limitations and use cases
As you can see, the quality of the images is not that of a professional thermal camera and that is something obvious that you would already know as soon as you start reading. Because you cannot equate a hardware of thousands of euros to one that costs just 100 euros.
However, these technical limitations are supplemented by the many uses that can be given to this project. Mainly for educational issues it is interesting to carry it out. Because the little ones can understand much better how certain physical aspects work and see an image that is very unknown to many.
Then, from a more personal point of view, as a security system it can also be very interesting . As well as to carry out different checks in the home if you are curious and are looking for things as varied as the points that generate the most heat in a room, the hottest areas once summer arrives or similar things.
The possibilities are really set by you, but if you run out of ideas or want to improve this first version, follow Shaffner closely. Because you have already commented on what the next steps will be in this particular and interesting project.