IIO temperature sensor ICs (MLX90614, TMP117, MAX31865, MCP9600, and friends)
Drivers for discrete digital temperature sensor chips used in embedded, industrial, and consumer hardware: Melexis infrared thermometers (MLX9061x/32/35), TI digital thermometers (TMP006/007/117), Microchip MCP9600 thermocouple and Maxim MAX31865 RTD front-ends, ADI LTC2983, and HID sensor-hub temperature inputs found on laptops and industrial controllers.
recommendation
It should stay because this directory hosts a working collection of drivers for many distinct, currently-sold temperature sensor chips from Melexis, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices/Maxim, and Microchip. Several of these drivers received feature work and cleanups in 2024 and 2025, and the underlying parts (TMP117, MLX90614, MAX31865, MCP9600) are still in active production, so there is no single replacement and no sign of retirement.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
mlx90614 still received nontrivial upstream maintenance in April 2026.
- lore.kernel.org
tmp117 received functional driver work in 2024 (vcc-supply support), indicating live deployments and maintainer attention.
- lore.kernel.org
mcp9600 gained new functionality in 2025 (IIR filter support), showing ongoing subsystem investment rather than retirement.
- ti.com
TMP117 was listed by TI as ACTIVE, so hardware covered by this directory was still sold new in 2025.
- melexis.com
MLX90614 remained a current Melexis product page in 2025-era web indexing, supporting continued market availability.
- analog.com
MAX31865 was listed by Analog Devices as PRODUCTION, supporting continued availability of covered RTD/temperature hardware.
- microchip.com
Microchip still offered the MCP9600 product, supporting continued new deployments in industrial/embedded systems.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Shell `sed` on drivers/iio/temperature/Kconfig shows this is a live collection of many vendor-specific temperature-sensor drivers, not a dead compatibility shim. Lore evidence was gathered with `lore_activity` on tmp117.c, mlx90614.c, and mcp9600.c; these returned 2024-2026 feature/cleanup patches. Two `lore_regex` subject scans for removal/deprecation discussion timed out, so I found no positive removal evidence. Vendor availability URLs were obtained with `web.search_query` on official domains (ti.com, melexis.com, analog.com, microchip.com). Because multiple covered chip families are still sold and upstream work is recent, there is no natural single replacement and the directory should be kept.