Unlike all the other temperature sensors we have, this breakout has a really cool IR sensor from TI that can measure the temperature of an object without touching it! Simply point the sensor towards what you want to measure and it will detect the temperature by absorbing IR waves emitted. The embedded thermopile sensor generates a very very small voltage depending on how much IR there is, and using some math, that micro voltage can be used to calculate the temperature. It also takes the measurement over an area so it can be handy for determining the average temperature of something.

This sensor comes as a ultra-small 0.5mm pitch BGA, too hard to solder by hand. So we stuck it on an easy-to-work-with breakout board. The sensor works with 3 to 5V logic so it requires no logic level shifting. There are two address pins and using a funky method of connecting the pins you can have up to 8 TMP006's connected to one i2c bus (see the datasheet table 1 for the connections). We also include a small piece of 0.1" breakaway header so you can easily solder to and use this sensor on a breadboard. Two mounting holes make it easy to attach to an enclosure.

Of course, we wouldn't just hand you a datasheet and wish you luck, we've written an easy-to-use Arduino library with an example that will have you up and running in 5 minutes. The code can also be ported to any microcontroller with i2c support, the hardest math part has already been taken care of.

Contact-less Infrared Thermopile Sensor Breakout - TMP006 (7:05)