This is great progress. Have you found a place to buy the ZyTemp sensor? I am in Vermont and needed an array of these last night when I froze some pipes. Today I banked the entire house foundation with snow. Really cheap sensors could have saved me some work. Is there the potential to create a device to distribute to the thousands of New Englanders and others who need to understand the thermal properties of their houses better?

I added some changes to my documentation so as to clarify that I am not actually designing a new Thermal Flashlight build, but rather experimenting with a modification to the existing method outlined at http://publiclab.org/wiki/thermal-camera. The only drawback I've encountered with the existing method is that the Melexis MLX90614 Infrared sensor is too much of a hassle to get a hold of. I'm attempting to see if similar results can be achieved by replacing the Melexis component with a much more common, off-the-shelf sensor that can be found in any Radio Shack and modified by soldering new connections to the serial port. The hope is that more people will be able to build their own devices if all the components are easy to obtain.
That said, the Melexis MLX90614 IR Sensor would be my first choice as it is well documented within the hobbyist/maker community. Also, the retail thermometers are cheaper because the major retailers can afford to buy in large batches, but if the intent were to "distribute to thousands of New Englanders" then the Melexis would almost certainly be a better choice as the economy of scale would lean more in its favor.
MLX90614 Datasheet- http://www.melexis.com/Asset/IR-sensor-thermometer-MLX90614-Datasheet-DownloadLink-5152.aspx Hacker-Friendly Breakout for MLX90614- https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10740

RadioShack Page for Pocket IR Thermometer- http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4288088&utm_source=google&utm_medium=PPC&utm_term=_intitle:Thermometers&utm_content=b&utm_campaign=CE_Fitness_DSA_Clickserves&gclid=CJHE8py_47sCFXPNOgod31wAqA

Manufacturers Datasheet- http://www.zytemp.com/products/tn0pm2.asp

Wow, very interesting. What would the serial output be like, ideally? just a stream of temperature values?

Cool!

Don't miss out on the Visualight mod which we're trying to adapt to be a thermal flashlight. http://publiclab.org/tag/visualight

Right now I think the goal would be to see any kind of range in the output so as to adjust the LED code accordingly. The current serial output above and not only do the numbers remain unchanged, but something is clearly off in the readings as I can guarantee the temperature was not 210.20 F at the time (I would've settled for 59 Degrees indoors, but these past couple days have been insane!) If I remember right, the factory state requires the user to push the button every time they want a new reading. This probably entails some kind of interrupt code that resets the sensor at regular intervals. Or intervals could be set to predefined positions on a pan/tilt servo mount. I'll post the sketch I'm using once I finally figure out the Markdown keystrokes for indenting blocks of Arduino code. Failing that I'll link to a Github repo.

As far as a full thermal flashlight build-out is concerned, I wonder if anybody has tried using the Melexis Evaluation Board from Sparkfun (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10740). Considering the standalone sensor was pushing the price threshold at $20, the $50 eval board is definitely over the line for a hobbyist BUT it DOES include an ATMEGA328 Microcontroller embedded right into the PCB. Theoretically this means it could be programmed as a standalone unit with no need for an external Arduino. Assuming it has enough extra outputs to trigger a string of RGB LEDs it seems like the perfect form factor for a modded flashlight ala- http://www.maxjusticz.com/light-painting-with-temperature/

UPDATE: See my new research note- http://publiclab.org/notes/code4maine/01-22-2014/thermal-flashlight-using-mlx90614-ir-evaluation-board-from-sparkfun

I put this project on hold in order to build a thermal flashlight using the "Evaluation Board for MLX90614 IR Thermometer" from Sparkfun- https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10740 As you'll see in the research note I'm almost there but haven't figured out the LED part yet. If I do, this could serve as a reference for the "Visualight" project as it has a much smaller form factor and by replacing the current ATmega328 with a newer microcontroller chip like the ATmega32u4 or ATTiny85 it would have USB-Host support.

Hi @ajawitz,

Do you happen to have a binary dump of the EEPROM that's on the Radio Shack pocket IR thermometer? My unit is spitting out an "Er 5" error. Among the minimal information available online about this error, it appears to indicate that the EEPROM is corrupt.

Thanks!