This is a placeholder topic for “Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan” comments.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan works with Raspberry Pi 4 and the Raspberry Pi 4 Case. Designed for overclockers and other power users, it keeps your Raspberry Pi 4 at a comfortable operating temperature even under heavy load.
Read more
Hello! I was just wondering if there was a downloadable script for the Raspberry Pi 4 Case Fan (a script like the one for the Argon One fan). I know how to use it with Raspberry Pi OS but I would like to use some other Linux distros. Thank you!
1 Like
Hi Willem,
All you’d have to do would be to turn on and off the control pin on the Pi that the fan plugs into.
Someone made a simple script for this, you’ll just have to double check that running the gpio and vcgencmd command will work in your OS:
#!/bin/bash
ontemp=48
gpio -g mode 3 out
temp=$(vcgencmd measure_temp | egrep -o '[0-9]*\.[0-9]*')
echo $temp #use BCM pin 3, as pin 2 is used for PSU control
temp0=${temp%.*}
echo $temp0
if [ $temp0 -gt $ontemp ]
then
echo greater than $ontemp fan on
gpio -g write 3 1
else
echo less than or equal to $ontemp fan off
gpio -g write 3 0
fi
All the best with your cool Pi!
-James
1 Like
Thanks for your help! I appreciate your time.
1 Like
Hi there,
I have a Raspberry Pi B+ (2014) and plan on buying the official 3B case as it seems to have the same IO ports. I’m using my B+ to build software regularly and I’m looking at at cooling solutions. Would this fan addon fit the 3B case?
Hi @Daniella273643, Welcome to the Forums!!!
The Pi 4 Case and Pi 3 Case are quite different in how they are designed.
The Fan is only designed to work with the Pi 4 case. I wasn’t able to cram it in a Pi 3 case either.
The Pi 3 should be fine without running an active cooler on the SOC. Just adding a small heatsink should be enough to keep it running cool.
1 Like
Hi Daniella
I am not sure “seems” would be good enough. If it were me I would like to be “sure”.
Cheers Bob
1 Like
Thanks Aaron for trying to fit it in. I have tried just a heat sink but I’m hitting thermal throttling when compiling. I’ll look into a different case 
1 Like
Hey Bob,
That’s a valid concern but that’s a polite mis-speak on my part. I’m sure it’ll fit from experience
Hi Daniella
I am sure this would have been checked. But I am not to know that as your experience and expertise would be unknown to anyone at this end.
If my statement looked like criticism it is meant to be constructive and please see it that way. It just looked like you could plug it in without checking everything and do some damage. Maybe not. I don’t know much about RPi but it seems that they chop and change things like GPIO every time they have a change. But I think they DO keep the power pins in the same place so possibly no real damage could occur.
You will have to excuse me if I seem a bit picky re attention to detail but in my working world any grey areas were gravely frowned on. Of course some situations are unavoidable but boy did it create some documentation. Best all around if this sort of scenario can be avoided. Bleck and White, that’s the go.
Cheers Bob
2 Likes
Hey Bob,
No offense taken! I have an old 3B case that my Pi B+ lives in and has no cooling vents so I’m just trying to look around for solution’s that won’t require me to go art-and-crafts mode.
You’re right about the Raspberry Pi foundation changing things up generally each release. The Pi B+ - Pi 3B generally have the same form form factor. Pi 3B+ changed where their PMIC is located off of memory (I’m likely wrong but a chip got moved). GPIO pins have remained mostly the same since the A+/B+ where it went from 26-pin to 40-pin. Pi 4 for some reason swapped the positions of the ethernet and usb ports then changed it back to the old configuration with the pi 5.
I can relate about being pedantic. I’m running Gentoo on the Pi and generally have been filling in the blank spots on the Gentoo wiki where things are missing (namely any sort of configuration documentation regarding GPIO and it’s sub functions). The recent-ish deprecation of OMX and MMAL as well have been a pain as the Raspberry Pi team haven’t really released any good documentation regarding how to use the HW codecs with the newer v4l2_m2m interface. I understand why the decision was made to use standard kernel interfaces as logevity of them will probably last longer than a decade. This results in the same as you said; grey areas means documentation gets made
Regards.
Daniella
2 Likes
Hi Daniella
Nicely reinforces the reason I stay right away from RPi. I do read some of the posts and it seems there is not much in the way of backward compatibility. I get the impression that the operating systems get changed like changing your shirt and every time this happens most of what you have will not work and you have to start again. I did purchase a Pico some time ago but I haven’t really seriously turned it on as yet. I tried once or twice downloading a sketch written with Arduino IDE but without success. It is something I have or have not done I think but haven’t bothered as yet to find out what.
One of the last major projects I was heavily involved with during my working life has been going for over 25 years now and I believe is currently being considered for upgrading. But rest assured this will be done with minimum fuss and zero disruption. This particular system CANNOT be realistically shut down.
Cheers Bob
1 Like
Hey Bob,
It’s honestly each to their own about the Pi’s.
The mmal GPU interface as well as openmax hadn’t been updated since 2012. Broadcom wrote the core library for that, set up a working group and abandoned it a year later. Although it worked, it did have numerous issues; one being that you could spawn more outputs than your hardware could handle. v4l2_m2m (video for linux memory to memory) is a kernel interface and because the kernel specifically handles the pipeline, it get scheduled and gets managed correctly. The pipeline is honestly easier to use but like stated in my last post, not particularly well documented by the Raspberry Pi Org currently on how to properly access the MPEG-2 decoder (I use it for watching IPTV since Aussie TV streams in MPEG encoding) of the VC4 GPU. I’m sure your system that’s been running for 25 years (which is impressive for an always-on-service) gets occasional updates.
These particular API’s hadn’t been touched in a long time and hadn’t been adapting to the ever evolving Linux ecosystem.
Regarding your Pico, it’s decently easy to get started with if you install thonny and use micropython. Core Electronics has their own page and video regarding that. Alternatively, Chapter 3 from Connecting to the Internet with Raspberry Pi Pico W works okay as a follow-along. You already own the hardware, may as well use it for something instead of it be a fancy paper-weight.
Regards,
Daniella
Hi Daniella
Oh Yes, in a very structured manner. There are 6 operator / work stations dedicated to software maintenance.
Re Pico. I thought it was supposed to be programmable using the Arduino IDE and I think it is. I think I was doing something wrong. Will get to it eventually. Might even try Thonny and Micropython as you suggest.
It is not heavy enough.
1 Like
