DEVMO AMG8833 88 IR Thermal Camera Sensor Breakout Imager Array Temperature Sensor Module Grid-Eye 8x8 Infrared Camera Module Array Board IIC I2C 3-5V Compatible with Ardu-ino Rasp-Berry Pi AMG-8833

These are cool little sensors. You can put together a reasonable thermal sensor for pretty cheap with the right LCD and a Pi Zero.First I tried it with an Arduino and setup was straightforward, but I didn't have a display to show the output nicely. I only tested the thermistor (single temp reading), and ran the pixel array output which printed temperatures in a grid.Getting the device up and running on a Pi Zero was a little more involved.First I tried a script I found from Adafruit, but it was super slow, and the image didn't look right. I had to get several packages from raspbian apt (python3-scipy, and python3-pygame), and from pip3 (colour, adafruit-blinka, adafruit-circuitpython-amg88xx).I found a different script on github in makerportal/AMG8833_IR_cam. This has a slow startup time (probably want a pi 3/4/5 for speed), but it was usable as a realtime camera. I had to make two changes to make the image match my sensor orientation. First I added origin='lower' to the imshow function call, and then I added a np-fliplr() call to the new_z assignment in the final loop.im1 = ax.imshow(grid_z,vmin=18,vmax=37,cmap=plt.cm.RdBu_r,origin='lower')new_z = interp(np.fliplr(np.reshape(pixels,pix_res)))The resulting interpolated image looks pretty nice, but it tends to produce curvier shapes than what you're actually viewing. There's a half second lag or so, but it's quite usable for viewing heat sources.

I thought this would be an interesting module to play with. Although there is very little supporting information on the product page, a quick google helped out. I connected this to a raspberry pi and was able to quickly get a terminal program to prove it worked.Now, when I get some time, I can play with it a bit more and see if I can see how leaky my house is when it's freezing outside :)