Disclaimer: The IR sensor for this activity is not medical grade. This means it cannot serve diagnostic purposes. If at any point you are concerned about your temperature, use a medical thermometer. If you are still concerned, consider consulting your family physician.
What you will need for this activity:
|
Arduino and USB
|
Arduino Wires
|
Infrared Sensor
|
Downloading the required library
You will need to download the Adafruit_MLX90614 library.
This is the mode number of the touchless temperature sensor we have.
This is the mode number of the touchless temperature sensor we have.
The Code and Wiring the Sensor
|
The code for the sensor is to the right here.
The wiring for the sensor is as follows: 1) Vin to 5V on Arduino 2) GND to GND on Arduino 3) SCL to A5 on Arduino 4) SDA to A4 on Arduino 
|
|
Check code, upload to board, and see if it works!
|
If it uploads to the board, check to see if it is working.
Open up the Serial Monitor by clicking on the magnifying glass on the upper right side of the Arduino program window. You will see something similar the outputs here. Try pointing it at your forehead. See the temperature approach body temperature as you bring it closer and closer to your forehead. Keep it at least an inch away. (make sure there is no hair in the way) If you do not like how fast it updates, change the code's delay value and reupload to board. |
|
"Calibrating" the sensor
Is your Serial Monitor displaying temperatures that are lower or higher than your actual body's temperature? If so, then you can calibrate the sensor by adding a "correction factor" to your code.
|
I used a thermometer to check my temperature. Turned out it was 98.5 F. My prior Serial Monitor reading for the sensor was getting around 94 or 95 F. That was at 1 inch from my head. I thought that was too close. I wanted it to work at about 3 inches away from my head. It turned out that I needed to correct the reading by around 4 C. To make it read right at the distance I wanted.
Below is the readings after the correction. 
|
See the code below for how I did my calibration correction. You may have a different amount that you need to use to calibrate it. I used 4 C.
|
Are Infrared Thermometers Accurate?
Cleveland Clinic's article on touchless temp sensor accuracy:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/are-infrared-thermometers-accurate/
Cleveland Clinic's article on touchless temp sensor accuracy:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/are-infrared-thermometers-accurate/
This lesson was inspired by the following resources:
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/TheGadgetBoy/diy-a-5-minutes-contactless-oled-thermometer-with-arduino-857a1d
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/akshayjoseph666/covid-19-non-contact-thermometer-ad448a
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/TheGadgetBoy/diy-a-5-minutes-contactless-oled-thermometer-with-arduino-857a1d
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/akshayjoseph666/covid-19-non-contact-thermometer-ad448a