Rockpro64 CPU fan

[mikeD]

Hi
I have just fitted a fan to my heatsink.
When I checked the voltage on the connector labelled FAN, there is no voltage.
Currently I am taking the 12 volts from the 4 pin socket behind the power socket.
Should the FAN socket be working?

Thanks
mikeD

[tllim]

Hi
I have just fitted a fan to my heatsink.
When I checked the voltage on the connector labelled FAN, there is no voltage.
Currently I am taking the 12 volts from the 4 pin socket behind the power socket.
Should the FAN socket be working?

Thanks
mikeD

There is a 2 Pin 12V fan port at the Pi2 bus. This is a PWM control fan port and speed can be controlled by software.
You also can use the 4pin 12V socket for Fan but this si always on.

[mikeD]

OK thats great, and very useful.
Thanks for the information.

[DIDquest]

Hi
I have just fitted a fan to my heatsink.
When I checked the voltage on the connector labelled FAN, there is no voltage.
Currently I am taking the 12 volts from the 4 pin socket behind the power socket.
Should the FAN socket be working?

Thanks
mikeD

There is a 2 Pin 12V fan port at the Pi2 bus. This is a PWM control fan port and speed can be controlled by software.
You also can use the 4pin 12V socket for Fan but this si always on.

Hi,
I have a couple of extra questions regarding fan control. I feel like I am missing something fairly basic, but I havent been able to find another source for this information.

1. Is there a way to enable the fan pins?
(Pine64 sold a small 12V fan made for the rockpro64 board, but there doesnt seem to be an explanation on how to turn it on or enable the pins.) Could it possibly be part of or an extension of the pi-2 bus?

2. I tried to install fancontrol as part of lm-sensors but lm-sensors returned that there were no sensors installed, which prevented fancontrol or pwmconfig from running. I also installed xsensors, psensor, neither of which were able to locate a temperature sensor either. BUT, 'sensors viewer' is reading something: "ACPI v<Unknown> zones" and displays a thermal_zone0 and thermal_zone1 are showing a realiztic looking 38C ... until you run some cpu tasks -- which you can feel the change in temperature in the mid-profile heatsink just by touching it, yet the value hasn't budged, so I am skeptical that it is actually reading a value. Does this imply that I have a defective sensor, or is is just not enabled.

3. I have been trying to find examples from other pine64 boards to see if I could adapt it, but it appears that no other board had a dedicated 12v 2pin fan port. Perhaps I suck at finding stuff in forums/google. I have seen other examples using the PI-2 Bus itself, but I would prefer to use the pins specifically designated for that purpose.

If you suspect I have missed something, or want any terminal outputs, etc. please let me know.
Thanks,

[Luke]

As of today, if you want to try out the fan then you'll need to update the kernel:

Code:

https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-kernel/releases/tag/4.4.132-1077-rockchip-ayufan

Currently the fan works in an on/off mode (at least for me):

Code:

nano /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1

The range should be from 0 - 255, but for now ... for me ... 0, 1 and 2 are 'off' while 3 and up is 'on'.

[dukla2000]

BUT, 'sensors viewer' is reading something: "ACPI v<Unknown> zones" and displays a thermal_zone0 and thermal_zone1 are showing a realiztic looking 38C ... until you run some cpu tasks -- which you can feel the change in temperature in the mid-profile heatsink just by touching it, yet the value hasn't budged, so I am skeptical that it is actually reading a value. Does this imply that I have a defective sensor, or is is just not enabled.

On 4.4.132-1075-rockchip-ayufan-ga83beded8524 thermal_zone0 seems to report CPU temp fine to me. ran up to 81C in testing which seemed odd (as I was looking for thermal throttling which did not happen) but have since seen (on IRC) it is set at 85C at the moment, likely to drop to 80C in a future release.

thermal_zone1 is harder to guess: at idle is equal to zone0, under load as zone0 climbs it seems to lag about 5C behind but also climbs. Need to see if there is any RK3399 spec of where the sensors actually are.

[ayufan]

Try `rock64_diagnostic.sh -m` to display current status of the system.

I will tune the fan controls later to give more fine control. It is all about the duty cycle and period of square wave. We might be looking at 50-200Hz instead of last released 1kHz, and previously 100kHz.

[DIDquest]

As of today, if you want to try out the fan then you'll need to update the kernel:

Code:

https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-kernel/releases/tag/4.4.132-1077-rockchip-ayufan

Currently the fan works in an on/off mode (at least for me):

Code:

nano /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1

The range should be from 0 - 255, but for now ... for me ... 0, 1 and 2 are 'off' while 3 and up is 'on'.

Thanks!
This solution works. While it is annoying that you have to manually set it every time, it is very useful for times when you know that you will be doing cpu intensitive tasks.

I must admit the simplicity of the file 'pwm1' was surprising... it is just a single number... not like a rule or something more complex. (insert "the more you know" star animation).

[DIDquest]

Try `rock64_diagnostic.sh -m` to display current status of the system.

I will tune the fan controls later to give more fine control. It is all about the duty cycle and period of square wave. We might be looking at 50-200Hz instead of last released 1kHz, and previously 100kHz.

The command on its own when entered into terminal results in "command not found". It seems like a bash file, but when I searched for it: no results. If it is a bash file, where is it located so I can test it?

[evilbunny]

The command on its own when entered into terminal results in "command not found". It seems like a bash file, but when I searched for it: no results. If it is a bash file, where is it located so I can test it?

It is located in /usr/local/sbin/