ATX power supply

[LMM]

Hey!

I'm still around, and am already at version 3 of my idea, incidentally covering everything (and more) of the things you mentioned. I have created a HAT for my Raspberry Pi that powers the Pi, the hard disks and the RockPro64. The Pi is always on and controls power to the HDDs and the RockPro, which turn on as soon as powered.

I have switched from using an ATX PSU to using the 3A Power Supply from Pine64, as my ATX PSU was extremely inefficient (for about 20W of the power consumption of the RockPro and 4 HDDs it are up about 40W at the primary input).

But now to your questions:

- How to power the RockPro from an ATX PSU?
 You hook up your HDDs to the SATA power connectors of the PSU.
 You can use the 12V rail for powering the RockPro, either solder a barrel plug to it or use the Pin header near to the barrel jack on the RockPro. Whichever you like most.
 You connect the Power-On signal of the PSU (usually the green wire on the 24-pin connector) to a ground line with a transistor (NPN or nMOS). Then you can turn on the PSU by switching the transistor, which you can do with the Pi Zero. The Pi Zero can be powered by the always-on 5V standby rail of the PSU (pin 9 on the connector). When the Pi Zero turns on the PSU, the HDDs and the RockPro automatically power up.

My tip: if you understand a bit about circuits and know how a soldering iron works, use the 3A power supply from Pine64 (or any other supply in that power class). A PSU is way too oversized for this and will just waste a lot of power


- Does the RockPro reboot by itself or do you use WOL?
 The RockPro boots as soon as it gets power. After all, it is a mobile SoC, so it behaves a lot like a smartphone or tablet.
 Mine runs 24/7 so I have never even looked up if it has WOL capability...


- PS : No PWD function with the RP64?
 Do you mean PWM? Sure it must have, it even has its own pin header to attach a fan. However, documentation on that was rather sketchy when I started my RockPro project (I got one from the first batch), and since I have an RPi and an Arduino in my case anyways whose PWM functionality I know well, I have just used that. Why make life hard when you can make it easy?

Hey,

I'm using an ATX PSU from my old computer in my RockPro64 powered home server. It is a really nice solution, as it has enough power reserves to run 4 hard disks, cooling fans etc., and even has the right connectors to them.

The only problem is turning the system on and off. As you may know, an ATX PSU does only provide 5V in the 'off' state, so in the case you want to really be able to turn off your system (also the fans and hard disks), you need a device that turns the PSU on and off for you.

That might be just a simple switch that connects the Power-Supply-On line with Ground. I used a transistor as a switch that is activated by an arduino that is running from the 5V standby line (and thus is always on). To tell the Arduino to switch the system on, I just use a push button. The advantage of this setup is that you can connect your Arduino through serial to the RockPro64 and instruct it to send a regular heartbeet signal. If this signal is interrupted (because the RockPro has powered off or crashed), the Arduino just shuts off the PSU and thus the fans and hard disks. Obviously, in my server it restarts everything as I want 24/7 online time. I have to say though, the RockPro is running 24/7 for the last couple of weeks and did so without as much as a hiccup.

PS: a nice thing about using an Arduino: you can use its PWM function to speed control many fans...

Digging up an old thread but I am thinking about build my own NAS using the RockPro64 and I hope you still hang around
I think it's a match but I still have difficulties to ensure how to integrate it. I played with my RPi but it's very different this time.

I basically need a ATX PSU to power my HDDs (plan to have 2), and I would like to use it to power the RP64, but how do you connect it to the ATX PSU?

Nice to have the Arduino control! I was thinking about using a Pi Zero to do a similar thing. Basically, I want to keep power consumption low and was planning off-hours (with possibility to start it remotely eventually - let me dream).
Does the RP64 reboots by itself or do you send a WOL call?

Thanks!

PS : No PWD function with the RP64?

Hi, I also use an ATX power supply to power several Rockpro64. I am using the CPU plug (PCI-e 8-PIN) which delivers 12V and a specific plug (ATX 8-pin to DC barrel) that has 8 DC barrel available. To make it function I have to by pass the power-on with a "jumper" by connecting the PS-on with the com. My PSU has a power switch.