I saw this fictitious product on the web and was impressed: <http://www.behance.net/gallery/Sprout-Infant-Monitor-System/4033245> However, as I said the product does not really exist, but the seed is planted and I seek to find a means to achieve something similar in the DIY fashion.

At the moment I'm only interested in the temperature reading from a distance feature. I've run into a bit of a problem identifying a temperature sensor that is capable of taking a reading from any range more than 10cm. I've scoured the Googles and found the most popular sensor was the MLX90614, but that is extremely short range from what I gather. I was searching for any long range temperature sensor compatible with the Arduino, but only found a few that had extremely limited range.

There are other important factors such as precision, effective angle, and operating condition limits, but they are all less of importance behind effective range.