Visual Monitoring
Solutions for visual monitoring: timed stills, thermal imaging, and infrared eyes in the places you cannot stand and watch.
On the bench
ESP32-CAM Timed-Still Camera Coming
A camera and a Wi-Fi board on one tiny module for the price of lunch. Pointed at the propagation tray or the far pen it takes a still on a schedule and pushes each frame to a place you own: germination, bloom, and the slow things you cannot stand and watch become a strip of film.
ESP32-CAM + PIR Wake Trigger
The same camera module asleep on batteries until a motion sensor wakes it: a snapshot of whatever moved, then back to sleep. The classic trail-camera pattern, built open — your pictures land at your endpoint, not in a subscription app.
MLX90640 Thermal Imager (32×24) Coming
A 32-by-24 grid of temperatures: coarse as a picture, sharp as an instrument. Aimed at the trough it flags the fevered animal standing in the herd; aimed at the haystack it sees the hotspot forming inside; aimed at the frost pocket it maps cold settling in — thermal sight without a thousand-dollar imager.
MLX90614 Fixed Spot Infrared Eye Coming
One no-contact temperature, read continuously from a fixed aim: the compost surface, the udder line at the stanchion, leaf versus air. The same eye the greenhouse aisle points at the canopy, pointed wherever a single surface temperature tells the story.
STHS34PF80 Infrared Presence Sensor
Warm-body presence with no camera and no lens: an infrared sensor that knows something living is there, in total darkness, without taking a picture of anyone. For the barn alley, the farm store after hours, and every spot where "is something there?" matters and a camera is more than you want.