Hi all,
I'm working on putting together a project for a remote sensing class I'm currently taking and would like your advice. The end goal of the project is to collect temperature data on local streams in the region. Currently the data is being taken with handheld IR guns at each desired location. My thoughts were to instead collect the data from low aerial altitudes with a narrow FOV IR sensor on pre-mapped GPS routes of the streams. I have a bit of experience with multi-copters as I've built a line of sight tri-copter in the past (I plan on modifying this as a good starting point, probably tearing down and rebuilding as a quadcopter). The temperature sensor I've had my eye on so far has been the upgraded, narrow FOV version of this guy
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9570
which is on digikey for $50. One main area of concern will be getting controller and IMU shield set up and interfaced to the temperature sensor properly. I'm wondering if, instead of re-inventing the wheel, code already exists for this particular sensor? Also, since the altitudes will be fairly low (just above any treelines which might be surrounding the areas), I'm wondering how well the sonar altitude holding which most people here seem to use will work out.
Replies
Did you look at the links at the bottom of the Sparkfun page you linked above? The bildr.org link has some arduino code that you may be able to build from.
http://bildr.org/2011/02/mlx90614-arduino/