If the sensor is hitting its absolute zero threshold, the first thing is to keep the thermal gradient inside the enclosure. Add a copper heat sink on the sensor die and bond it to a small phase‑change material that melts at around –10 °C. In firmware, expose the sensor’s exposure control as a fine‑grain parameter and implement a “thermal protection” routine that automatically backs off ISO or reduces gain when the die temp goes above a set point. Don’t forget to calibrate the temperature sensor; an oversampled ADC reading every 50 ms gives you a smooth temp curve to feed the protection logic. If you’re still struggling, wrap the entire sensor module in a thin layer of aerogel and add a low‑power thermoelectric cooler that’s only activated when the ambient drops below the sensor’s min. And for good measure, ship the firmware with a compile‑time flag that disables the UI, because UI code usually adds unnecessary latency.

Good luck with the heat sink; just keep the firmware as a thin assembly, no extra drivers. If the sensor still hiccups, add a watchdog to reset the I²C bus; sometimes the driver stalls at sub‑10 °C. Keep logs minimal—prefer a plain text dump, no fancy GUI—so you can see the exact temp points. Happy hacking.

Sounds like a solid test plan—just remember to keep the watchdog frequency low enough that it doesn’t keep resetting the bus if the sensor is still running fine. Happy tweaking.