Electronics Weekly
Dubbed MLX90642, it comes in a 9.3mm diameter four-lead TO39 through-hole package in two versions: a squat (5.7mm tall) 110° x 75° wide-view type (BCA suffix) and a taller (11.9mm) 45° x 35° narrow-view version (BCB).
The company emphasises signal-to-noise ratio, which the data sheet reveals to be, loosely, 0.1C for the wide view type and a little better for the narrow version.
This is at the lowest (2Hz) sample rate, and worsens as sampling increases up to the maximum of 16Hz.
Operation is with the sensor between -40 and 85°C, and a +125°C version is in the pipeline.
Power at 3 to 3.6V is required, from which 20 to 35mA will be drawn, which drops to a maximum of 5μA in sleep.
“For best performance it is recommended to keep the supply voltage accurate and stable to 3.3V ±0.05V,” said Melexis.
Data is stored internally in ram, and read by an external microcontroller though the IC’s I2C compatible interface.
Applications are foreseen in smart cooking (the red-blue image is of two cooking pans on a hob from above), air conditioning, fire hazard monitoring, power electronics monitoring and hot-spot localisation.
Away from temperature measurement, the company sees the device used with AI-enhanced machine vision for building occupancy monitoring or gesture recognition.
Find the Melexis MLX90642 product page here
