I wanted to use a IR temperature sensor to measure temperatures from about 5-6 feet away. I was wondering if this sensor would be able to perform such task.
Unless the object you are measuring is very large, I don’t believe you will be able to get an accurate temperature at that distance.
Field of View – Distance vs. Spot Diameter
An IR thermometer’s field-of-view (FOV) is a critical property to be aware of. It determines the relationship between the distance from an object and the area of space being observed. The MLX90614’s field of view is cone-shaped – its sensing area is very narrow if it’s near the object, but gets increasingly wider as it moves farther away.
The MLX90614BAA has a relatively wide field-of-view angle: 90°. That means for every 1cm you move away from an object, the sensing area grows by 2cm. If you’re one foot away from an object (30.48cm), the sensing area will be two feet (60.96cm).
The sensor reports the average temperature of the entire field of view, a 90 degree cone as stated above.
You can buy MLX sensors with smaller fields of view.