Adafruit AMG8833 8x8 Thermal Camera Sensor

Created by Justin Cooper

Last updated on 2018-01-17 05:57:08 PM UTC

 Guide Contents

Guide Contents 2
Overview 3
Pinouts 6
Power Pins: 6
Logic pins: 6
Assembly 8
Prepare the header strips: 8
Add the breakout board: 9
And Solder! 10
Arduino Wiring & Test 12
I2C Wiring 12
Download Adafruit_AMG88xx library 12
Load Thermistor Test 13
Pixel Array Output 14
Library Reference 15
Arduino Library Docs 16
Arduino Thermal Camera 17
Adafruit 1.44" Color TFT LCD Display with MicroSD Card breakout 17
CircuitPython Wiring & Test 19
I2C Wiring 19
Download Adafruit_CircuitPython_AMG88xx library 19
Raspberry Pi Thermal Camera 22
Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B - ARMv8 with 1G RAM 22
PiTFT Plus Assembled 320x240 2.8" TFT + Resistive Touchscreen 23
Assembled Pi T-Cobbler Plus - GPIO Breakout 23
Setup PiTFT 23
Install Python Software 23
Enable I2C 24
Wiring Up Sensor 25
Run example code 26
Downloads 28
Documents 28
Schematic 28
Dimensions 28

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Overview

Add heat-vision to your project and with an Adafruit AMG8833 Grid-EYE Breakout! This sensor from Panasonic is an
8x8 array of IR thermal sensors. When connected to your microcontroller (or raspberry Pi) it will return an array of 64
individual infrared temperature readings over I2C. It's like those fancy thermal cameras, but compact and simple
enough for easy integration.

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This part will measure temperatures ranging from 0°C to 80°C (32°F to 176°F) with an accuracy of +- 2.5°C (4.5°F). It can
detect a human from a distance of up to 7 meters (23) feet. With a maximum frame rate of 10Hz, It's perfect for creating
your own human detector or mini thermal camera. We have code for using this breakout on an Arduino or compatible
(the sensor communicates over I2C) or on a Raspberry Pi with Python. On the Pi, with a bit of image processing help
from the SciPy python library we were able to interpolate the 8x8 grid and get some pretty nice results!

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The AMG8833 is the next generation of 8x8 thermal IR sensors from Panasonic, and offers higher performance than
it's predecessor the AMG8831. The sensor only supports I2C, and has a configurable interrupt pin that can fire when
any individual pixel goes above or below a thresholds that you set.

To make it easy to use, we pick & placed it on a breakout board with a 3.3V regulator and level shifting. So you can use
it with any 3V or 5V microcontroller or computer.

Even better - We've done all the hard work here, with example code and supporting software libraries to get you up in
running in just a few lines of code!

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Pinouts

This camera has 4 mounting holes, and two header strips. Only the bottom strip is connected to the sensor. The top
set of breakouts is there for mechanical stability only!

Power Pins:
Vin - this is the power pin. Since the sensor uses 3.3V, we have included an onboard voltage regulator that will
take 3-5VDC and safely convert it down. To power the board, give it the same power as the logic level of your
microcontroller - e.g. for a 5V micro like Arduino, use 5V
3Vo - this is the 3.3V output from the voltage regulator, you can grab up to 100mA from this if you like
GND - common ground for power and logic

Logic pins:
SCL - this is the I2C clock pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C clock line. There is a 10K pullup on this pin
and it is level shifted so you can use 3 - 5VDC.
SDA - this is the I2C data pin, connect to your microcontrollers I2C data line. There is a 10K pullup on this pin and
it is level shifted so you can use 3 - 5VDC.
INT - this is the interrupt-output pin. It is 3V logic and you can use it to detect when something moves or changes
in the sensor vision path.

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The 6 holes at the top of the board are provided for stability and are not connected to anything. Use these if you want
your sensor to sit nice and flat on a breadboard or Perma-Proto.

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Assembly

Prepare the header strips:

Cut the strips to length if necessary. It will be easier to
solder if you insert it into a breadboard - long pins down

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 Add the breakout board:
Place the breakout board over the pins so that the short
pins poke through the breakout pads

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 And Solder!
Be sure to solder all pins for reliable electrical contact.

(For tips on soldering, be sure to check out our Guide to

Excellent Soldering (https://adafru.it/aTk)).

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 You're done! Check your solder joints visually and
continue onto the next steps

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Arduino Wiring & Test
You can easily wire this breakout to any microcontroller, we'll be using an Arduino. You can use any other kind of
microcontroller as well as long as it has I2C clock and I2C data lines.

I2C Wiring
Connect Vin to the power supply, 3-5V is fine. Use the same voltage that the microcontroller logic is based off of.
For most Arduinos, that is 5V
Connect GND to common power/data ground
Connect the SCL pin to the I2C clock SCL pin on your Arduino.
On an UNO & '328 based Arduino, this is also known as A5, on a Mega it is also known as digital 21 and on a
Leonardo/Micro, digital 3
Connect the SDA pin to the I2C data SDA pin on your Arduino.
On an UNO & '328 based Arduino, this is also known as A4, on a Mega it is also known as digital 20 and on a
Leonardo/Micro, digital 2

By default, the I2C address is 0x69. If you solder the jumper on the back of the board labeled "Addr", the address will
change to 0x68.

Download Adafruit_AMG88xx library

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To begin reading sensor data, you will need to install the Adafruit_AMG88xx library.

Start up the IDE and open the Library Manager:

Type in AMG88xx until you see the Adafruit Library pop up. Click Install!

We also have a great tutorial on Arduino library installation at:

http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-all-about-arduino-libraries-install-use

Load Thermistor Test

Open up File->Examples->Adafruit_AMG88xx->amg88xx_test and upload to your Arduino wired up to the sensor. This
example just connects to the sensor and reads the internal thermistor to test your connections.

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Once uploaded to your Arduino, open up the serial console at 9600 baud speed to see the internal thermistor reading.
If you get a reading of ~26° degrees (room temperature) then everything is wired and working correctly!

Pixel Array Output

OK now that we know the sensor is working, let's read actual thermal data. Load up File -> Examples ->
Adafruit_AMG88 -> pixels_test

Upload the code, and open the serial console at 9600 baud rate. You should see a printout of the array of readings
every second. Each number is the detected temperature in Celsius, and in the 8x8 grid order that comes from the
sensor

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The numbers should increase if you put your hand or face above the sensor. They'll decrease if you hold up something
cold in front of the sensor eye

Library Reference
To create the object, use

Adafruit_AMG88xx amg;

Initialize the sensor using

status = amg.begin();
if (!status) {
Serial.println("Could not find a valid AMG88xx sensor, check wiring!");
while (1);
}

to read the pixels you will need an array to place the readings into. Once you have one, you can call readPixels. Make
sure the array you create is big enough by using the pre-defined AMG88xx_PIXEL_ARRAY_SIZE macro.

float pixels[AMG88xx_PIXEL_ARRAY_SIZE];
amg.readPixels(pixels);

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Arduino Library Docs
Arduino Library Docs (https://adafru.it/Au6)

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Arduino Thermal Camera
To make your Arduino into a cool thermal camera, we can add a small display.

In this example we use an Adafruit 1.44" Color TFT. With some code changes, you can use other size displays but a
color display is best of course.

Adafruit 1.44" Color TFT LCD Display with MicroSD Card

breakout
PRODUCT ID: 2088

https://adafru.it/dXl $14.95
IN STOCK

Keep your AMG8833 breakout wired as you already have it from the Wiring & Test section above, and add your TFT
like this

Once everything is all wired up, load up File->Examples->Adafruit_AMG88xx->thermal_cam

Hit upload and you should have a simple thermal camera!

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CircuitPython Wiring & Test
I2C Wiring
Connect Vin to the power supply, 3-5V is fine.
Connect GND to common power/data ground
Connect the SCL pin to the I2C clock SCL pin on your Feather or Metro M0.
On a Gemma M0 this would be Pad #2/ A1
Connect the SDA pin to the I2C data SDA pin on your Feather or Metro M0.
On an Gemma M0 this would be Pad #0/A2

By default, the I2C address is 0x69. If you solder the jumper on the back of the board labeled "Addr", the address will
change to 0x68.

Download Adafruit_CircuitPython_AMG88xx library

To begin reading sensor data, you will need to download Adafruit_CircuitPython_AMG88xx from our github
repository. You can do that by downloading the most recent .mpy release from
here: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_AMG88xx/releases

The plug in your CircuitPython device via the USB cable and drag the downloaded adafruit_amg88xx.mpy file to
the /lib folder on the CIRCUITPY drive.

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Then make a file named code.py in the root folder of your CIRCUITPY drive (if it is not already made) and copy and
paste this code:

import time

import busio
import board

import adafruit_amg88xx

i2c_bus = busio.I2C(board.SCL, board.SDA)

amg = adafruit_amg88xx.AMG88XX(i2c_bus)

while True:
for row in amg.pixels:
#pad to 1 decimal place
print(['{0:.1f}'.format(temp) for temp in row])
print("")

print("\n")
time.sleep(1)

save the file and open up your serial terminal. You should see the device print out an array of pixels every second.

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Raspberry Pi Thermal Camera

The Raspberry Pi also has an i2c interface, and even better has processing capability to interpolate and filter the
sensor output. By adding processing power, you can 'turn' the 8x8 output into what appears to be a higher-resolution
display.

We're using a PiTFT 2.8" and a Pi Cobbler but the code can be adapted to output to the HDMI display - we're using
pygame to draw to the framebuffer.

You can use any Raspberry Pi computer, from Pi A+ to Pi 3 or even a Pi Zero, but we happen to have a Pi 3 on our desk
set up already so we're using that.

Raspberry Pi 3 - Model B - ARMv8 with 1G RAM

PRODUCT ID: 3055

https://adafru.it/scY $35.00
IN STOCK

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 PiTFT Plus Assembled 320x240 2.8" TFT + Resistive
Touchscreen
PRODUCT ID: 2298

https://adafru.it/eZS $34.95
IN STOCK

Assembled Pi T-Cobbler Plus - GPIO Breakout

PRODUCT ID: 2028

https://adafru.it/xgf $7.95
IN STOCK

Setup PiTFT
If you have not done so already, the first thing you will need to do is setup your PiTFT. Instructions on how to do so can
be found in this guide.

Install Python Software

Once your PiTFT is all set up, and you have Internet access set up, lets install some software we will need. First make
sure your Pi package manager is up to date.

sudo apt-get update

Next, we will install the Raspberry Pi library and Adafruit_GPIO which is our hardware interfacing layer

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential python-pip python-dev python-smbus git

git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_Python_GPIO.git
cd Adafruit_Python_GPIO
sudo python setup.py install

Finally, install both pygame and scipy. Pygame lets us draw easily to a screen using python, we'll use that to make the
display work. Scipy is a powerful scientific/data processing library that we can use to magically turn the 8x8 = 64 pixel
array into something that looks more like a 32x32 = 1024 pixel array. Wow, isn't digital signal processing cool?

sudo apt-get install -y python-scipy python-pygame

sudo pip install colour Adafruit_AMG88xx

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Enable I2C
We need to enable the I2C bus so we can communicate with the sensor.

sudo raspi-config

select Advanced options, enable I2C, and then

finish.

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Once I2C is enabled, run sudo shutdown -h now to turn off the Pi and prepare for wiring

Wiring Up Sensor
With the Pi powered off, we can wire up the sensor to the Pi Cobbler like this:

Connect Vin to the 3V or 5V power supply (either is fine)

Connect GND to the ground pin on the Cobbler
Connect SDA to SDA on the Cobbler
Connect SCL to SCL on the Cobbler

You can also use direct wires, we happen to have a Cobbler ready. remember you can plug the cobbler into the
bottom of the PiTFT to get access to all the pins!

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Now you should be able to verify that the sensor is wired up correctly by asking the Pi to detect what addresses it can
see on the I2C bus:

sudo i2cdetect -y 1

It should show up under it's default address (0x69). If you don't see 69, check your wiring, did you install I2C support,
etc?

Run example code

At long last, we are finally ready to run our example code

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_AMG88xx_python.git
cd Adafruit_AMG88xx_python/examples
sudo python thermal_cam.py

If you have everything installed and wired up correctly, you should see a nice thermal camera image. Cool tones (blue
and purple) are cooler temperatures, and warmer tones (yellow, red) are warmer temperatures.

If your image seems to be flipped on the screen, try changing the orientation of the AMG8833 breakout on the
breadboard.

If you're interested int he details, and want to know more about how we made 64 pixels look like many more, it's
called bicubic interpolation (hat tip to OSHpark for the idea!)

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Downloads
Documents
AMG8833 datasheet
AMG8833 Arduino Driver
Fritzing object in the Adafruit Fritzing library
AMG8833 python driver
AMG8833 CircuitPython Driver
AMG8833 breakout PCB files (EAGLE format)

Schematic
click to enlarge

Dimensions
in inches. Click to enlarge

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© Adafruit Industries Last Updated: 2018-01-17 05:57:07 PM UTC Page 29 of 29