Earlier this year we highlighted the Panasonic Grid-EYE thermal camera board, a low-cost - but admittedly extremely low-resolution - thermal imaging module compatible with the Arduino and other microcontroller platforms. While its £60 retail price is far below anything else on the market, for many projects it still represents the biggest bill of materials entry by far - and if you only need to measure the temperature of a single zone, it's overkill.
Enter Konstantin Dimitrov, whose latest Instructable offers a single-zone alternative using the MLX90614 infrared contactless thermometer. Featuring instructions on using the bare sensor - a cheaper, thought marginally more complex, alternative to buying a module on a pre-assembled breakout board - with the Arduino Uno, Konstantin's guide includes the installation of an organic LED (OLED) display for reading out the temperature, though this can naturally be left out if you'd prefer to read and log your data via the Arduino's serial port.
Aside from its simplicity, the best feature of Konstantin's creation is the low cost: the MLX90614 infrared thermometer costs as little as £10 from UK stockists or under £4 imported from China. While it doesn't offer the multi-zone capabilities of Panasonic's Grid-EYE, it's more than enough for single-zone remote temperature monitoring projects - or even, combined with a Wi-Fi- or Bluetooth-enabled Arduino or Genuino such as the MKR1000, building your own non-contact thermometer with remote logging functionality.
I'm going to show you how to make a contactless OLED thermometer with Arduino Uno and infrared temp sensor MLX90614 in 5 minutes. This project is very simple, it requires basic programming and electronic skills to make it.