Measure temperature faster and hotter with our latest upgrade kit

Measure temperature faster and hotter with our latest upgrade kit

févr. 19, 2026 Publié par: Cameron Davidson-Pilon RSS Feed

TLDR: Use the new Pioreactor Precision Temperature Upgrade Kit to get +30 ℃ temperatures and faster & more accurate readings. 

The Pioreactor v1.5 was designed with dedicated locations for adding external sensors. We had in mind two sensors: spectrometers and far-infrared (FIR) remote temperature sensor. The latter is what we want to discuss today. 

The Adafruit MLX90632 Temperature Sensor can take the temperature of an object without touching it. To accomplish this, it measures the far-infrared (2 μm to 14 μm) that all warm bodies radiate. By placing it adjacent to the Pioreactor's vial in the fixed SPEC position, we can measure the internal liquid temperature of the culture reliably without any immersed probe. You might ask:

"Don't we already measure the internal liquid temperature? It's in the Pioreactor UI"

And you're correct, we have an existing temperature sensor and algorithm that measures the internal liquid temperature. However, this algorithm has two downsides:

  1. It's slow: we only get one data point every 3.5 minutes due to the algorithm's protocol.
  2. It requires us to turn off heating periodically to collect data. This limits how much heat we can output ⇒ overall liquid temperature is limited.

If we move to an external probe, we can solve both these issues: more data points, higher heating, and faster response time. 

However, an external temperature probe isn't measuring the internal liquid - it's measuring the glass and surrounding plastics! Though the non-contact sensor provided a close value to the internal temperature, it was not close enough. 

To correct this, we built a small validation cluster: each unit had an internal probe (ground truth) plus the FIR sensor mounted in SPEC. We then collected data across a range of heating conditions and trained a model to map FIR readings (and selected onboard variables) to internal liquid temperature.

We ended up collecting close to 1 million data points to build our model. Here's an output of the internal temperature, and our model's predicted temperature, using the external FIR sensor. 

An example test run of the reported immersed probe vs our external sensor and algorithm


The error distribution from the ~1 million data points

 

So you can be 95% sure the reported temperature from the FIR sensor is within ±0.2 ℃. Furthermore, we easily achieved +30 ℃ above ambient culture temperatures, while maintaining that tight accuracy. 

 

Time series of temperature in a Pioreactor cluster

 

Sounds great - how do we use it?

First, you'll require the new Pioreactor Precision Temperature Upgrade Kit, available today, for your Pioreactor 40ml v1.5. The Adafruit MLX90632 sensor fits snugly into the SPEC A position on the Pioreactor's body, and two screws & a cable securely connect it to the system. 

The Adafruit MLX90632 board fits into the SPECT port on your Pioreactor v1.5

Second, you'll need our specific Pioreactor plugin. This can be installed via 

pio plugins install pioreactor-precision-temperature-plugin

or by downloading the wheel to your Pioreactor and installing it there.

Finally, you can start Temp. Automation from the UI and enjoy the ride. 

Conclusion

Next steps are to calibrate this for the Pioreactor 20ml, and continue to build on top of high-resolution temperature reads. With more temperature data coming in, you can get faster response times, less overshoots, and better reproducibility.

Check out the Precison Temperature Upgrade Kit today, explore our plugin docs, or email us at hello@pioreactor.com if you have any questions!