Raspberry Pi 4 & Pi TV Hat & DfRobot Smart Cooling Hat

Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi All,

Trust someone can assist.

I’m setting up a KODI Media centre using:

COMPONENTS:

SOFTWARE

  • Raspberry Pi 64 bit OS with desktop
  • KODI (with TV HeadEnd add on)
  • DfRobot Smart Cooling Hat software
  • Rip DVD.iso files for use by KODI using WinXDVD on Windows PC

I have the KODI system up and running (100 +DVD.iso files) with the DfRobot Smart Cooling Hat working nicely (nice colourful wizzy LED displays. WOO HOO!!) :grin::sunglasses:

My question is, when I plug the Pi TV Hat onto the GPIO pins, with the above combination, will I get any GPIO pin conflicts? (I will need some GPIO pin extenders etc to get the Pi TV hat to sit clear of the the Smart Cooling Hat)

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Alan.

2

Check if the Raspberry Pi’s power supply can handle the additional load from the USB SSDs and the TV Hat. You might need a 3A+ power supply.

3

Hey @Alan281856,

Luckily this rabbit hole has been delved down before, so we don’t have to!

This forum post facilitated a dive into the raspberry pi github repo, and seems to have determined that the TV HAT communicates via SPI and uses the following pins:

5V - pin#2, pin#4;
3V3 - pin#1, pin#17 (not connected);
GND - pin#6, pin#9, pin#14, pin#20, pin#25, pin#30, pin#34 pin,#39;
SPI MOSI - pin#19;
SPI MISO - pin#21;
SPI SCLK - pin#23;
SPI SC0 - pin#24;
ID_SD - pin#27;
ID_SC - pin#28.

From investigating the DFRobot smart cooling hat example code and wiki page, it looks like all of its communication is performed via I2C.

You shouldn’t have any pin conflicts while using this, though I must admit I would recommend investigating the DFR files yourself to confirm, or comparing with your own working setup.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

4

Thanks for that.

I’m using the official USB-C Raspberry Pi power supply. 5.1V 3amp output to power my Media Centre. (Raspberry Pi 4, DfRobot smart cooling hat, Pi TV hat, 2 * 1TB USB SSD drives)

How will I know if I need more power? Will the Raspberry Pi 4 red power LED go off at times of insufficient power?

I’ll be using the same (additional power supply) to power the external USB DVD BluRay player if I can get the player to work with Kodi and/or VLC Player.

Alan.

5

Zach,

Thanks for the info. I think I understand what you are saying. The wiki page you linked to isn’t all that clear on getting the Smart Cooling Hat up and going. There are errors in the supplied compile commands (gcc) and no compile command for the main temp_control code. Had to work that one out for myself to get it to #include the necessary code. And the embedded comments in the supplied/downloaded code are in Chinese.

But I’ll give it all a go when I get the GPIO extenders (currently on backorder at Core Electronics) and let you know how/if it all works.

Alan.

1 Like
6

Hi Alan,

If you have a monitor output on the Pi you will get a message similar to this

image
image727×401 40 KB

Otherwise if you have a headerless setup, you are correct, the red power LED will intermittently flash.

When you do receive the headers I would love to hear an update on your project!

7

Dan,

Yep. I have seen that message up the top of the desktop before. It was when using just a 5V 3A USB “recharge” all in one socket to power the Raspberry Pi 3 I had been using for PiHole and Octoprint. Hence now using the proper Raspberry Pi power supply.

I have blown up 2 Raspberry Pi 4s so far with this Kodi project. I believe they overheated. I was just using a heatsink for cooling, and the Pi TV Hat plugged on the top. The last one, when it stopped working on a reboot, the heatsink (big one) was very very very “OUCH” hot to touch. Hence, now, the Cooling Hat (with OLED display for temp) which now never goes above 47C (20% CPU) even with Kodi running a video flat out.

I was still in the “build” stage at that time, with the TV Hat plugged in, but not setup or configured with TVHeadEnd.

Would a full load of external devices (USB wireless keyboard/mouse, 2 * USB SSD drives and USB external DVD player (separately powered) cause a Raspberry Pi to overheat?

I understand these Raspberry Pis should throttle the processor at approx 80C to prevent overheating?

Do these Raspberry Pis come with a “goof proof” warranty?:open_mouth:

Thanks

Alan.

1 Like
8

Hey @Alan281856,

The Pi will do a bit of throttling in the background to try and prevent overheating. This is a great article that has a lot of useful information related to cooling a Pi:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/heating-and-cooling-raspberry-pi-5/

I would be surprised if that list of devices would lead to overheating. You normally expect to see that kind of problem with CPU-intensive tasks. Not something you would typically relate to external devices.

Using an official Raspberry Pi Power Supply can remove some of the complications when it comes to powering a project like this as they are specifically designed for this task.

Unfortunately, such a thing as a “goof proof” warranty doesn’t exist but I can see the frustration!

Hope this helps! :slight_smile: