PyThermalCamera

MLX90640 / Topdon TC001 thermal camera streaming for Raspberry Pi.

Features

• Web streaming via FastAPI with MJPEG
• Pygame direct display for kiosk mode (lower CPU)
• Hybrid mode - toggle between local display and remote streaming
• Multiple colormaps, contrast control, snapshots, recording
• Raspberry Pi 5 support with Wayland compatibility

Quick Start

# Install dependencies
sudo apt-get install python3-opencv python3-fastapi python3-uvicorn

# Run
python3 src/main.py

Web UI at http://<pi-ip>:8000

Display Modes

Mode	Use Case	CPU Usage
Web only	Remote viewing	Low
Pygame	Local kiosk display	Medium
Hybrid	Both with toggle button	Higher

Kiosk Deployment

Systemd services in deploy/ for auto-start:

# Copy services
sudo cp deploy/thermal-*.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable thermal-camera-app.service
sudo systemctl start thermal-camera-app.service

See deploy/ and RPI Specific Noncamera/ for full kiosk setup with Chromium.

Controls

Button	Action
Colormap	Cycle color schemes
HUD	Toggle stats overlay
Record	Start/stop video recording
Snapshot	Save PNG image
Contrast +/-	Adjust contrast
Switch Display	Toggle local/remote mode

Fork Status

This project originated as a fork of Les' Laboratory PyThermalCamera but has diverged significantly with a rewritten codebase focused on:

• FastAPI web streaming (replacing OpenCV window)
• Raspberry Pi 5 kiosk deployment
• Hybrid local/remote display modes

Temperature extraction based on LeoDJ's P2Pro-Viewer.