Fusion thermal vision comes to the Raspberry Pi

Adafruit has recently released a beginner-friendly guide that takes a handful of Adafruit components and a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B to create a dual-camera thermal vision imager. Inspired by the "PitFusion" thermal camera project, this build takes the Raspberry Pi camera module 3 feed and overlays it with a thermal feed from the Adafruit MLX90640. This combination creates a real-time heatmap of the camera's subject while retaining the image quality of the visible light camera. The guide also includes CAD files for a custom case, which, like the rest of the project, simply snaps together. However, hardware is only half of the equation; thankfully, the software side is just as straightforward.

To run the thermal cameras GUI, users must first install the Pi's custom Python library, Blinka, for which a script is provided to automatically install the necessary dependencies. Then, users will be able to install the project's software bundle, which will configure the cameras to work with the GUI. From here, users will have access to a variety of features, including adjusting the minimum and maximum temperature ranges for detection, as well as adjusting the opacity of the thermal overlay. Of course, users will also be able to save snapshots from the camera setup.

While it's not the highest-resolution thermal camera, the project opens up the Pi to a variety of new use cases, and with all the necessary components coming in at sub $200, this build is priced right around other entry-level thermal cameras. Curious users can find more information on the Raspberry Pi thermal camera build linked below.