Electronic – What are capacitive and inductive thermo sensors

Thermocouples:

• wide range of temperature sensing (Type T = -200-350°C; Type J = 95-760°C; Type K = 95-1260°C; other types go to even higher temperatures)
• can be very accurate
• sensing parameter = voltage generated by junctions at different temperatures
• thermocouple voltage is relatively low (4.3mV for Type T thermocouple with one end at 0 C, other at 100 C, so that's 43uV/C tempco)
• mostly linear

Thermistors:

• more narrow range of sensing (Quality Z thermistors spec'd at -55 to +150 C)
• sensing parameter = resistance
• usually very nonlinear
• NTC thermistors have a roughly exponential decrease in resistance with increasing temperature
• good for sensing small changes in temperature (unless you are careful in your signal conditioning, it's hard to use a thermistor accurately and with high resolution over more than a 50 C range).
• sensing circuit doesn't need amplification & is very simple (voltage divider with reference resistor tied to reference voltage usually is sufficient) – see my blog for more information about signal conditioning.
• accuracy is usually hard to get better than 1°C without calibration

The only way to know if two IIC devices are compatible in this context is to compare their IIC interface in the two datasheets very carefully. IIC may be largely standard, but it says nothing about the payload data carried over IIC.

If a particular product becomes popular, competitors will often make theirs compatible. However, there is no guarantee that any two devices are compatible. Each could use a different format for sending the data, require different settings in different registers that are accessed differently to select features, etc.

Unless you know they are compatible, assume they are not.